really--really flirt with the Doctor?"
laughed Miss Wingate as she rubbed her delicate little nose against
Mother Mayberry's shoulder with Teether Pike's exact nozzling gesture.

"Well, it's a affair that have been a-going on since the first time I
laid eyes on Ugly, and they ain't nothing ever a-going to stop it
'lessen his wife objects," answered Mother Mayberry as she glanced down
quizzically at the face against her shoulder.

"She's sure to--to adore it," answered the singer lady as she buried
her head in Mother's tie so only the rosy back of her neck showed.

"Yes, I think she will understand," answered the Doctor's mother with a
sweet note in her rich voice as she bestowed a little hug on the
slender body pressed close to hers. "You see, child, the tie twixt a
woman and her own man-child ain't like anything on earth, and I feel it
must hold between Mary and her Son in Heaven. I felt it pull close like
steel when mine weren't fifteen minutes old, and it won't die when I do
neither. And that Tom Mayberry are so serious that a-flirting with him
gets him sorter on his blind side and works to a finish. Can't you try
to help me out about that coat and the silk hat?"

"Yes," answered Miss Wingate with a dimpling smile, "I'll try. I'll ask
him what I shall wear and then maybe--maybe--"

"That's the very idea, honey-bird!" exclaimed Mother Mayberry
delightedly. "Tell him you are a-going to put on your best bib and
tucker and it'll start the notion in him to keep you company. If a
woman can just make a man believe his vanity are proper pride, he will
prance along like the trick horse in a circus. Now s'pose you kinder
saunter round careless like to--"

"Mis' Mayberry," came in a doleful voice over the wall near the porch,
and Mrs. Peavey's mournful face appeared, framed in the lilac bushes.
"I've just been reading the Tuesday Bolivar Herald, and Bettie Pratt's
own first husband's sister-in-law's child died last week out in
Californy, where she moved when she married the second time. I hate to
tell Bettie and have the wedding stopped, but I feel it are my duty not
to let her pay no disrespect to her Turner children by having a wedding
with some of they law-kin in trouble."

"Well, Hettie Ann, I don't believe I'd tell her, for as bad as that
would be on the Turner children, think how much the Pratts and Hoovers
would lose in pleasure, so as they are the majority, it's only fair
they should rule." Mother Mayberry had f