as she put a
lovely dab of thick cream right on top of my saucer:

"Did you hear, father, that all of Sam's cows had been sick and that he
has lost his two finest calves?"

I couldn't stand any more. I gulped the cream, remarked huskily on how
warm the April night was, and escaped down the front walk to the old
purple lilac-bush by the gate where up to my seventh year I had always
kept house with and for Sam whenever he would enter into the bonds of an
imaginary marriage with me for an hour or two. Sam made a good father of
a hollyhock doll family whenever he undertook the relation, and provided
liberally for us all in the way of honey, locusts, and grass nuts.

"And I, maybe, let him lose the last calf he has when he is noble and
poor and alone," I sobbed into my silk sleeve, which was so thin that I
shivered in the cool April moonlight as I leaned against the gate and
looked away out at the dim blue hills that rim the Harpeth Valley, at
the foot of one of which I seemed to see Sam's and Byrd's hollow log.

"Hello, Bettykin! Out putting our hollyhock family to bed?" laughed a
crisp, comforting, jolly voice right at my elbow as a big, rough hand
ruffled my beautifully smoothed hair and then gave a friendly shake to
my left shoulder. "How do you find all our children after a three-year
foreign sojourn?"

"I told you five years ago, when I put it up on my head, to stop ruffing
my hair, Sam Crittenden; and did you find that cow?" I answered, with
both defiance and anxiety in my voice.

"I did," answered Sam, cheerfully, "but how did I lose you in the
shuffle? I tied her up in the shack with a rope and then beat it in all
these five miles, partly by foot and partly by a neighbor's buggy, to
find and--er--rope you in. I am glad to see you are standing quietly at
the bars waiting for me, and as soon as I've greeted your mother and Dad
Hayes and got a little of the apple-float that I bet was the fatted calf
they killed for your prodigal return, I'll foot it the five miles back
in a relieved and contented frame of mind."

"How did you happen to let your cows get sick, Sam?" I demanded,
sternly, instead of putting my arms around his neck to tell him how
noble I had found out he was, and how glad I was that he had come all
that way to see me, and not to be mad at me because I didn't obey him
out in the lane.

"I don't know, Betty, I just don't know," answered Sam, as he lit a
corn-cob pipe and leaned closer to me in a t