st of
the friends had not come back from the lakes and the shore and their
country homes, but were running into town for that one evening. It was
all the most delicious excitement, but--oh, a place way down deep in me
behind my excited breathing was so sore about Sam! I couldn't even think
about his not being there, but I went on and danced and had a good time
in sheer desperation. Sam had to plow and hoe and reap and sow for food,
while we ate and drank it and made merry!

Then the first night came, and everybody was there looking in high
feather, and some of them wearing very low dress. Judge Vandyne had
taken all the boxes in the theater, and they were every one full to
overflowing with loving excitement about Peter. I was in the second box
on the right-hand side of the stage at the front, and Peter sat in the
shadow back of me. Julia and one of Peter's classmates were just behind
us. As the curtain went up Peter took a hard hold on my hand under my
white chiffon scarf, and I heard him mutter under his breath:

"Oh, Samboy!"

I am not going to try to describe that play of Peter's. The newspapers
used all the adjectives and things there are in the English language to
express enthusiasm with, and I haven't got any left. I will simply tell
about it.

When Peter had gone out and buried himself in the shack on the hillside
of The Briers, that looked out over the Harpeth Valley, he had
unconsciously buried that frozen hero in "The Emergence" and had gone to
work and resurrected him in a kind of Samuel Foster Crittenden. Instead
of being a complicated, heroic, erratic genius he was just a big,
simple, strong young man who was doing his part in the corner of the
world's vineyard where he had been sent to work. To help him Peter had
written in a wonderful girl with a great deal of brains for one so
young. Just the sort of woman that men like Sam and the hero deserve to
have. She was so lovely that I caught my breath and--and suffered. But
what made everybody in that theater laugh themselves happy was the
essence of Hayesboro that Peter had distilled and poured into his
characters. Everybody was so mixed up with everybody else that nobody
could feel sensitive or fail to enjoy every character. I couldn't tell
whether I was the girl that practised tango steps all the time, even
when the minister (who had manners like those of Colonel Menefee and the
Mayor of Hayesboro) came to supper, or the girl that always had a plate
of