o the rays that
shot out from window after window in the little village.

Uncle Tucker had hurried away to his belated barn duties and little
Miss Amanda into the house to stir up Miss Lavinia's fire in
preparation for their retirement, which was a ceremony of long
duration and begun with the mounting of the chickens to their roosts.
Miss Lavinia sat with her hands folded in her lap over a collection of
the smaller gifts of the afternoon and her eyes looked far away cross
the Ridge, dim in the failing light, while her stern old face took on
softened and very lovely lines. Rose Mary stood near to help her into
the house and Everett leaned against a post close on the other side of
the rocker.

"Children," she said with a little break in her usual austere voice,
"I'm kinder ashamed of accusing the Lord of forgetting me this morning
when I look at all these remembers of me here that my neighbors have
given me. I found friends when I came here eighty-two years ago to-day
and as they have died off He has raised up a new crop outen their seed
for me. This rheumatism buckeye here is the present of the great
grandson of my first beau, and this afternoon I have looked into the
kind eyes of some of my friends dead and gone many a day, and have
seen smiles come to life that have been buried fifty years. I'm
a-feeling thankful to be here another summer to see my friends and
flowers a-blooming onct more, and come next April I am a-going to
want just such another infair as this one. Now help me into bed! Young
man, you can lift me up some, I'm stiff with so long setting, and I'm
a-going to want a power of rubbing this night, Rose Mary."

So, thus held by her duties of ministration, it was quite an hour
later that Rose Mary came out of the house, which was dark and
sleep-quiet, and found Everett still sitting on the front steps
smoking and--waiting.

"Tired?" he asked as she sank down on to the step beside him and
leaned her dark head back against one of the posts that supported the
mass of honeysuckle vine.

"Not much--and a heap happy," she answered, looking up at him with
reflected stars in her long-lashed blue eyes. "Wasn't it a lovely
party?"

"Yes," answered Everett slowly as he watched the smoke curl up from
his cigar and blow in the soft little night wind across toward Rose
Mary; "yes, it was a nice party. I seriously doubt if anywhere on any
of the known continents there could have been one just like it pulled
off by