e box. I carried it over to her for him and Mr. Hoover jest
laughed, and said Buck meant Pattie didn't keep her face clean. But
Mis' Hoover hugged Pattie and whispered something to her and told Mr.
Hoover to shut up and go see how many children he could get to come in
and be washed up for dinner. Buck was a-waiting for me around the
corner of the store and when I told him how pleased Mis' Hoover and
Pattie were, he--"

"But wait a minute, 'Liza," interrupted Mother Mayberry with a laugh,
"them love jinks twixt Buck and Pattie is most interesting, but I'm
waiting to hear about your Aunt Prissy and Mr. Petway. It's liable to
be serious when two folks as old as they is--but go on with your tale,
honey."

"Well, Buck wrote two of them beautiful 'Remember me' verses on nice
pieces of white paper, in them curlycues the Deacon taught him, before
he got one to suit him and he left one on the counter, right by the
cheese box. While we was gone, along come 'Lias and Bud and Henny and
disgraced Aunt Prissy."

"Why, what did them scamps do?" demanded Mother Mayberry, looking over
her glasses in some perturbation as the end of the involved narration
began to dawn upon her.

"They tooken the other box of soap outen the window and put the verse
in it and carried it down to Aunt Prissy and told her Mr. Petway sent
it to her. It was a joke they said, but they was good and skeered. I
got home then and I seen her and Maw laughing about it and Aunt Prissy
was just as pink and pleased and loving looking as Pattie were and Maw
was a-joking of her like Mis' Pratt--no, Hoover--did Pattie and all of
a sudden I knewed it were them bad boys, 'cause I seen 'em laughing in
a way I knows is badness. Oh, then I was so skeered I couldn't swoller
something in my throat 'cause I thought maybe Aunt Prissy would jump
offen Bee Rock when she found she were so disgraced with Mr. Petway. I
woulder done it myself, for I got right red in my own face thinking
about it." And the blush that was a dawn of the eternal feminine again
rose to the little bud-woman's face.

"It were awful, Eliza child, and I don't blame you for being mortified
over it," said Mother Mayberry with a quick appreciation of the wound
inflicted on the delicacy of the child, and the tale began to assume
serious proportions in her mind as she thought of the probable result
to the incipient affair between the elderly lovers that had been a
subject of prayful hope to her for some time past