of the sisters, from which he had fled a couple hours ago.

"They are still taking things out, talking them over and putting them
right back in the same place," answered Rose Mary with a faint echo of
his smile that tried to come to the surface bravely but had a
struggle. "We will have to try and move the furniture with it all
packed away as it is. It is just across the Road and I know everybody
will want to help me disturb their things as little as possible. Oh,
Uncle Tucker, it's almost worth the--the pain to see everybody
planning and working for us as they are doing. Friends are like those
tall pink hollyhocks that go along and bloom single on a stalk until
something happens to make them all flower out double like peonies. And
that reminds me, Aunt Viney says be sure and save some of the dry
jack-bean seed from last year you had out here in the seed press
for--"

"Say, Rose Mamie, say, what you think we found up on top of Mr.
Crabtree's bedpost what Mis' Rucker were a-sweeping down with a
broom?" and the General's face fairly beamed with excitement as he
stood dancing in the barn door. Tobe stood close behind him and small
Peggy and Jennie pressed close to Rose Mary's side, eager but not
daring to hasten Stonie's dramatic way of making Rose Mary guess the
news they were all so impatient to impart to her.

"Oh, what? Tell me quick, Stonie," pleaded Rose Mary with the
eagerness she knew would be expected of her. Even in her darkest
hours Rose Mary's sun had shone on the General with its usual
radiance of adoration and he had not been permitted to feel the
tragedy of the upheaval, but encouraged to enjoy to the utmost all its
small excitements. In fact the move over to the store had appealed to
a fast budding business instinct in the General and he had seen
himself soon promoted to the weighing out of sugar, wrapping up
bundles and delivering them over the counter to any one of the
admiring Swarm sent to the store for the purchase of the daily
provender.

"It were a tree squirrel and three little just-hatched ones in a
bunch," Stonie answered with due dramatic weight at Rose Mary's plea.
"Mis' Rucker thought it were a rat and jumped on the bed and hollowed
for Tobe to ketch it, and Peg and Jennie acted just like her, too,
after Tobe and me had ketched that mouse in the barn just last week
and tied it to a string and let it run at 'em all day to get 'em used
to rats and things just like boys." And the General cast