, won't you let me go--back to
my frantic and imploring employers?"

"Why no, I can't," answered Rose Mary as she pressed a yellow cake of
butter on to a blue plate and deftly curled it up with her paddle into
a huge yellow sunflower. "Uncle Tucker captured you roaming loose out
in his fields and he trusts you to me while he is at work and I must
keep you safe. He's fond of you and so are the Aunties and Stonewall
Jackson and Shoofly and Sniffer and--"

"And anybody else?" demanded Everett, preparing to dispose of the last
bite.

"Oh, everybody most along Providence Road," answered Rose Mary
enthusiastically, though not raising her eyes from the manipulation of
the third butter flower. "Can't you go out and dig up some more rocks
and things? I feel sure you haven't got a sample of all of them. And
there may be gold and silver and precious jewels just one inch deeper
than you have dug. Are you certain you can't squeeze up some oil
somewhere in the meadow? You told a whole lot of reasons to Uncle
Tucker why you knew you would find some, and now you'll have to stay
to prove yourself."

"No," answered Mark Everett quietly, and, as he spoke, he raised his
eyes and looked at Rose Mary keenly; "no, there is no oil that I can
discover, though the formation, as I explained to your uncle, is just
as I expected to find it. I've spent three weeks going over every inch
of the Valley and I can't find a trace of grease. I'm sorry."

"Well, I don't know that I care, except for your sake," answered Rose
Mary unconcernedly, with her eyes still on her task. "We don't any of
us like the smell of coal-oil, and it gives Aunt Viney asthma. It
would be awfully disagreeable to have wells of it right here on the
place. They'd be so ugly and smelly."

"But oil-wells mean--mean a great deal of wealth," ventured Everett.

"I know, but just think of the money Uncle Tucker gets for this butter
I make from the cows that graze on the meadows. Wouldn't it be awful
if they should happen to drink some of the coal-oil and make the
butter we send down to the city taste wrong and spoil the Sweetbriar
reputation? I like money though, most awfully, and I want some right
now. I want to--"

"Mary of the Rose, stop right there!" said Everett as he came over
from his post by the door and again seated himself on the corner of
the table. "I _will_ not listen to you give vent to the national
craving. I _will_ hold on to the illusion of having found one
unm