jest can't
fix it no way but to live here with my Uncle Jep and take care of him in
his old days. Oh, would you wait a minute?" as they reached the
horse-block and the Elder began to untie his mount with a discouraged
countenance. "Jest let me run back to the house--I won't keep you a
second. I got some little sugar cookies for Mart and Lucy."

Mart and Lucy were the Elder's children. He stood looking after her as
she ran lithely up the path, and wondered why she could love them so much
and him so little. She came back laughing and a bit out of breath.

"I expect we'll have company to-day," she told him comfortably. "We
always do when there's preaching at the church, and I 'low I'd better
stay home and see to the dinner."

The Elder had scarcely made his chastened adieux when the Lusk girls came
through the grove walking on either side of a young man.

The Lusk girls were Judith's nearest neighbours--if you excepted Huldah
Spiller at Jim Cal's cabin, and at the present Judith certainly was in
the mind to make an exception of her. The sisters were seldom seen apart;
narrow shouldered, short waisted, thin limbed young creatures, they were
even at seventeen bowing to a deprecating stoop. Their little faces were
alike, short-chinned with pink mouths inclined to be tremulous, the eyes
big, blue, and half-frightened in expression, and the drab hair drawn
away from the small foreheads so tightly that it looked almost grey. They
inevitably reminded one of a pair of blue and white night-moths, scarcely
fitted for a daylight world, and continually afraid of it.

"Cousin Lacey's over from the Far Cove," called Pendrilla before they
reached Judith. "Ain't it fine? Ef we-all can git up a play-party he says
he'll shore come ef we let him know in time."

The young fellow with them, their cousin Lacey Rountree, showed
sufficient resemblance to mark the family type, but his light eyes were
lit with reckless fires, and his short chin was carried with a defiant
tilt.

"What you foolin' along o' that old feller for, Judith?" he asked jerking
an irreverent thumb after the departing Elder.

"I wasn't fooling with him," returned Judith, her red lips demure, her
brown eyes laughing above them through their thick fringe of lashes.
"Elder Drane was consulting me about church matters--sech as children
like you have no call to meddle with."

Young Rountree smiled, "I'll bet he was!" picking up a stone and firing
it far into the blue in