nfidence; "they won't begin
till I get there. It wouldn't be fair." And she hurried down the Road
to where the group waited impatiently but loyally around the town pump.

"Ain't they all the Lord's blessings?" asked Mother Mayberry, as she
looked down the Road at the little swarm with tender pride in her eyes.

"That they are," answered the widow, with an echo of the pride in her
own rich voice, "and to think that pretty soon seventeen of 'em will be
mine!"

And it was an hour or two later that the old red sun had reluctantly
departed across the west meadows, just as a soft lady moon rose
languidly over Providence Nob. Providence suppers had all been served,
the day's news discussed with the men folk, jocularly eager to get the
drippings of excitement from the afternoon infair, and the Road
toddlers put to bed, when the soft-toned Meeting-house bell droned out
its call for the weekly prayer meeting. Very soon the Road was in a
gentle hum of conversation as the congregation issued from their house
doors and wended their way slowly toward the little church, which, back
from the Road in an old cedar glade, brooded over its peaceful yard of
graves. The men had all donned their coats and exchanged field hats for
stiff, uncomfortable, straight-brimmed straw, and their wives still
wore the Sewing Circle gala attire. The older children walked
decorously along, each group in wake of the heads of their own family,
though Buck Peavey had managed to annex himself to the Hoover household.

"Well, I don't know just what to do with you all," said Mother
Mayberry, as she came out on the front porch, sedately bonneted, with
her Bible and hymn-book under her arm and fortified with a huge
palm-leaf fan. "It's my duty to make you both come with Cindy and me to
prayer meeting, but I don't hold with a body using they own duty as a
stick to fray out other folks with. I reckon I'll have to let you two
just set here on the steps and see if you can outshine the moon in your
talk, which you can't, but think you can."

"Oh, we'll come with you! I was just going to get my hat," exclaimed
the singer lady as she rose from the steps upon which Doctor Tom kept
his seat and puffed a ring of his cigar smoke at his mother daringly.

"No, honey-bird, you've had a long day since your sun-up breakfast and
I'll excuse you. I'd LET Tom Mayberry go only I have to make him stay
to keep care of you. Put that lace fascination around your throat if a
breeze b