ill you git back from puttin' up the
nag," returned Laurella carelessly as she swung her light, frilled
skirts and tripped across the porch. "You needn't werry about me," she
called down to the old fellow where he sat speechlessly glaring.
"Mavity'll show me whar I can sit, and git me a nice cool drink; and
that's all I'll need for one while."

Pap Himes's mouth was open, but no words came.

He finally shut it with that click of the ill-fitting false teeth which
was familiar--and terrible--to everybody at the boarding-house, shook
out the lines over the old horse, and jogged away into the dusk.

"And this here's the baby," admired Mandy, kneeling in front of little
Deanie, when the newcomers halted in the front room. "Why, Johnnie
Consadine! She don't look like nothin' on earth but a little copy of
you. If she's dispositioned like you, I vow I'll just about love her
to death."

Mavity Bence was struggling up the porch steps loaded with the baggage
of the newcomers.

"Better leave that for your paw," the bride counselled her. "It's more
suited to a man person to lift them heavy things."

But Mavity had not lived with Pap Himes for nearly forty years without
knowing what was suited to him, in distinction, perhaps, from mankind in
general. She made no reply, but continued to bring in the baggage, and
Johnnie, after settling her mother in a rocking-chair with the cool
drink which the little woman had specified, hurried down to help her.

"Everybody always has been mighty good to me all my life," Laurella
Himes was saying to Mandy, Beulah and the others. "I reckon they always
will. Uncle Pros he just does for me like he was my daddy, and my
children always waited on me. Johnnie's the best gal that ever was, ef
she does have some quare notions."

"Ain't she?" returned Mandy enthusiastically, as Johnnie of the "quare
notions" helped Mavity Bence upstairs with the one small trunk belonging
to Laurella.

"Look out for that trunk, Johnnie," came her mother's caution, with a
girlish ripple of laughter in the tones. "Hit's a borried one. Now don't
you roach up and git mad. I had obliged to have a trunk, bein' wedded
and comin' down to the settlement this-a-way. I only borried Mildred
Faidley's. She won't never have any use for it. Evelyn Toler loaned me
the trimmin' o' this hat--ain't it sightly?"

Johnnie's distressed eyes met the pale gaze of Aunt Mavity across the
little oilcloth-covered coffer.

"I would 'a' told