h the letters, maybe I'll eat it to please you. Now be a-going
so as to be a-coming the sooner." With which admonition Mother took her
departure down the garden path.

She was tall and broad, was Mother Mayberry, and in her walk was left
much of the lissome strength of her girlhood to lighten the matronly
dignity of her carriage. Her stiffly starched, gray-print skirts swept
against a budding border of jonquils and the spring breezes floated an
end of her white lawn tie as a sort of challenge to a young cherry
tree, that was trying to snow out under the influence of the warm sun.
Her son smiled as he saw her stoop to lift a feeble, over-early hop
toad back under the safety of the jonquil leaves, out of sight of a
possible savage rooster. He knew what expression lay in her soft gray
eyes that brooded under her Wide, placid brow, upon which fell abundant
and often riotous silver water-waves. His own eyes were very like them
and softened as he looked at her, a masculine version of one of her
quick dimples quirked at the corner of his clean-cut mouth.

"The bread of life--she's found it," he said to himself musingly as he
slipped the last buckle in his bridle tight.

"Elinory," called Mother Mayberry from the kitchen steps, "come out
here and sense the spring. Everywhere you look they is some young thing
a-peeping up or a-reaching out or a-running over or wobbling or
bleating or calling. Looks like the whole world have done broke out in
blooms and babies."

"I can't--I wish I could," came an answer in a low, beautiful voice
with a queer, husky note. "It's all sticking to my hands, flour and
everything, and I don't know what to do!"

"Dearie me, you've put in the milk a little too liberal! Wait until I
sift on a mite more flour. Now rub it in light! See, it's all right,
and most beautiful dough. Don't be discouraged, for riz biscuits is
most the top test of cooking. Keep remembering back to those cup
custards you made yesterday, what Tom Mayberry ate three of for supper
and then tried to sneak one outen the milk-house to eat before he went
to bed."

"Oh, did he?" asked Miss Wingate with delight shining in her dark eyes
and a beautiful pink rising up in her pale cheeks. "I wish I COULD do
something to please him and make him feel how--how--grateful I am--for
the hope he's given me. I was so hopeless and unhappy--and desperate
when I came. But I believe my voice is coming back! Every day it's
stronger and you are so goo