?"

CHAPTER II

THE FOLKS-GARDEN

"Well," said Uncle Tucker meditatively, "I reckon a festibul on a
birthday can be taken as a kind of compliment to the Lord and no
special glorification to yourself. He instuted your first one Himself,
and I see no harm in jest a-marking of the years He sends you. What
are Sister Viney's special reasons against the junket?"

"Oh, I don't know what makes Aunt Viney feel this way!" exclaimed Rose
Mary with distress in her blue eyes that she raised to Uncle Tucker's,
that were bent benignly upon her as she stood in the barn door beside
him. "She says that as the Lord has granted her her fourscore years by
reason of great strength, she oughtn't to remind Him that He has
forgotten her by having an eighty-second birthday. Everybody in
Sweetbriar has been looking forward to it for a week, and it was going
to be such a lovely party. What shall we do? She says she just won't
have it, and Aunt Amandy is crying when Aunt Viney don't see it. She's
made up her mind, and I don't know what more to say to her."

"Rose Mary," said Uncle Tucker, with a quizzical smile quirking at the
corners of his mouth, "mighty often the ingredient of permanency is
left out in the making up of a woman's mind, one way or another. Can't
you kinder pervail with your Aunt Viney some? I've got a real hanker
after this little birthday to-do. Jest back her around to another view
of the question with a slack plow-line. Looks like it's too bad to--"

"Rose Mary, oh, Rose Mary, where are ye, child?" came a call in a
high, sweet old quaver of a voice from down the garden path, and Miss
Amanda hove in sight, hurrying along on eager but tottering little
feet. Her short, skimpy, gray skirts fluttered in the spring breezes
and her bright, old eyes peered out from the gray shawl she held over
her head with tremulous excitement. She was both laughing and panting
as Rose Mary threw her arm around her and drew her into the door of
the barn. "Sister Viney has consented in her mind about the party, all
along of a verse I was just now a-reading to her in our morning
lesson. Saint Luke says: '_It is meet that we should make merry and be
glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again_,' and at the
same minute the recollection of how sick Mr. Mark has been hit us
both. 'There now,' she says, 'you folks can jest go on with that party
to-day for the benefit of our young brother Everett's coming to so
good after all his suf