This has been a happy night, in which I betrothed myself to Alfred,
though he doesn't know it yet. I am going to take it as a sign that life
for us is going to be brilliant and gay and full of laughter and love.

I haven't had Billy in my arms to-day and I don't know how I shall ever
get myself to sleep if I let myself think about it. His sleep-place on
my breast aches. It is a comfort to think that the great big God
understands the women folk that He makes, even if they don't understand
themselves.

LEAF SIXTH

THE RESURRECTION RAZOO

Most parties are just bunches of selfish people who go off in the
corners and have good times all by themselves, but in Hillsboro,
Tennessee, it is not that way. Everybody that is not invited helps the
hostess get ready and have nice things for the others, and sometimes I
think they really have the best time of all.

This morning Aunt Bettie came up my front steps before breakfast with a
large basketful of things for my dinner and I wondered what I would have
collected to be served to those people by the time all my neighbors had
made their prize contributions. It took Aunt Bettie and Judy a half-hour
to unpack her things and set them in the refrigerator and on the pantry
shelves. One was a plump fruit-cake that had been keeping company in a
tight box with a sponge soaked in sherry for ever since New Year's. It
was ripe, or smelled so. It made me gnaw under my belt.

A little later Judy was exclaiming over a two-year-old ham that had been
simmered in port and larded with egg dressing, when Mrs. Johnson came in
and began to unpack her basket, which was mostly bottles of things she
said she used to "stick" food. The ginger-colored barber got the run of
them before the dinner was over and got badly stuck, so Judy says.
That's what made him make the mistake.

I had planned to have a lot of strange food and had ordered some things
up from a caterer in the city, but I telephoned the express man not to
deliver them until the next day, even if they did spoil. How could I use
soft shelled crabs when Mrs. Wade had sent me word that she was going to
bake some brook trout by a recipe of the judge's grandmother's? Mrs.
Hampton Buford had let me know about two fat little summer turkeys she
was going to stuff with corn-pone and green sage, and _fillet
mignon_ seemed foolish eating beside them. But when the little bit of
a baby pig, roasted whole with an apple in its mouth, looking too fri