hurt her feelings, but I want you to get Mis' Hoover to show you how
and make three nice shirts for Doctor Tom, so you can wash one while he
wears the other and keep one put away for Sunday. That is the way Maw
does for Paw and all the other folks on the Road does the same for they
men. Mis' Peavey can show you how to iron them nice, for she does the
Deacon's for me and Mother Mayberry is too busy to bother with such
things 'count of always having to go to sick folks even over to the
other side of the Nob. Cindy don't starch good. You'll do for Doctor
Tom nice, now you've got him, won't you?"

"Yes, Eliza, I will," answered the singer lady meekly, as this
prevision of the life domestic rose up and menaced her. She even had a
queer little thrill of pleasure at the thought of performing such
superhuman tasks for what was to be her individual responsibility among
Providence men along the Road. The certainty that she would never be
allowed to perform such offices at machine and tub actually depressed
her, for the thought had brought a primitive sense of possession that
she was loath to dismiss; the passion for service to love being an
instinct that sways the great lady and her country sister alike. "Do
you think he--will let me?" she asked of her admonisher.

"Just go on and do it and don't ask him," was the practical answer.
"There he comes now leading his horse and he have been to see Mis'
Bostick. I can get the dinner and run on to meet him and hear how he
thinks she are," she exclaimed as she seized her dish and bucket and
disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

And a few minutes later, as Doctor Mayberry was unsaddling his horse in
the barn a lithe figure enveloped as to head and shoulders in one of
Cindy's kitchen aprons darted under the dripping eaves and stood
breathless and laughing in the wide door.

"I saw you come up the Road," said the singer lady, as she divested
herself of the gingham garment, "and I was dying to get out in the
rain, much to Cindy's horror. You are late."

"Not much," answered the young Doctor, slipping out of his rain coat
and coming over to stand beside her in the door. "What have you been
doing all morning?"

"I've been being--being lectured," she answered, as she looked up in
his face with dancing dark eyes.

"Who did it to you?" he asked, taking her fingers into his and drawing
her farther back from the splash of the rain drops.

"Your Mother and then Eliza Pike," she answ