the long-tailed pink gown for the
daughter of young Eliza, had kept her busy and--with a quick smile she
had to admit to herself, happy. Indeed the remembrance of the rapid
disappearance of the pie and Doctor Mayberry's blush when, after he had
eaten two-thirds of it, his mother had informed him of the authorship,
brought a positive glow of pleasure to her cheeks. Such a serious,
gentle, skilful young Doctor as he was--and "a perfect dear" she went
as far as admitting to herself, this time with a low laugh.

And as if her pondering on his virtues had had power to bring a
materialization, suddenly Doctor Tom stood in front of her on the other
side of the gate. He had come from up the Road while she had been
looking down in the other direction, and in his hand he held a spray of
purple lilacs which he had broken from a large bush that hung over the
fence from the Pratt yard into the Road and also spread itself a yard
or two into Hoover territory.

"Aren't they lovely and plumy?" she asked, as she took the bunch he
offered and laid the purple flowers against the white ones she held in
her hand. "These are so much darker than Mrs. Mayberry's purple ones. I
wonder why."

"Some years they bloom lighter than Mother's and other years still
darker--just another one of the mysteries," he answered as he leaned
against the gate-post and looked down at her with a smile. He was tall,
and strong, and forceful, with a clean-cut young face which was lit by
Mother Mayberry's very own black-lashed, serene gray eyes, and his very
evident air of a man of affairs had much of the charm of Mother
Mayberry's rustic dignity. His serge coat, blue shirt and soft gray tie
had a decided cut of sophistication and were worn with a most worldly
grace that was yet strangely harmonious with his surroundings. For with
all of his distinctions in appearance and attainments, as a man he
struck no discord when contrasted with Mr. Pike's shirt-sleeved,
butternut-trousers personality and he seemed but the flowering of Buck
Peavey's store-clothes ambitions. The accord of it all struck Miss
Wingate so forcibly that unconsciously she gave voice to the feeling.

"How at home you are in all this--this?" she paused and raised her eyes
to his with a hint of helplessness to express herself within them.

"Simple life," he supplied with a smile that held a bit of banter.

"It's not so simple as one would think to balance a pie plate on one
hand and cut around it w