In my senior year his
tragedy came and I hurried back to find Uncle Tucker broken and old
with the horror of it, and with the place practically sold to avoid
open disgrace. His son died that year and left--left--some day I will
tell you the rest of it. I might have gone back into the world and
made a success of things and helped them in that way, from a
distance--but what they needed was--was me. And so I sat here many
sunset hours of loneliness and looked along Providence Road
until--until I think the Master must have passed this way and left me
His peace, though my mortal eyes didn't see Him. And now there lies my
home nest swung in a bower of blossoms full of the old sweetie birds,
the boy, the calf, puppy babies, pester chickens and--and I'm going to
take a large, gray, prowling night-bird back and tuck him away for
fear his cheeks will look hollow in the morning. I'm the mother bird,
and while I know He watches with me all through the night, sometimes I
sing in the dark because I and my nesties are close to Him and I'm not
the least bit afraid."

[Illustration: "I hope you feel easy in your mind now"]

CHAPTER IV

MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOW

"I hope you feel easy in your mind, child, now you've put this whole
garden to bed and tucked 'em under cover, heads and all," said Uncle
Tucker, as he spread the last bit of old sacking down over the end of
the row of little sprouting bean vines. "When I look at the garden I'm
half skeered to go in the house to bed for fear I haven't got a quilt
to my joints."

"Now, honey sweet, you know better than that," answered Rose Mary as
she rose from weighting down the end of a frilled white petticoat with
a huge clod of earth and stretched it so as to cover quite two yards
of the green shoots. "I haven't taken a thing of yours but two shirts
and one of your last summer seersucker coats. I'm going to mend the
split up the back in it for the wash Monday. Aunt Amandy lent me two
aprons and a sack and a petticoat for the peony bushes, and Aunt Viney
gave me this shawl and three chemises that cover all the pinks. I've
taken all the tablecloths for the early peas, and Stonie's shirts,
each one of them, have covered a whole lot of the poet's narcissus.
All the rest of the things are my own clothes, and I've still got a
clean dress for to-morrow. If I can just cover everything to-night, I
won't be afraid of the frost any more. You don't want all the lovely
little green things to