minister did help
you put 'em on 'em."

"But, Melissa, those anemones were more valuable than any lace ever
manufactured, and I am sure that Charlotte will absolve me when she
hears of the exigencies of the case," father pleaded over the top of
his morning paper. Mammy was pretending to dust his study, as a blind to
the lecture she was administering.

"Yes, sir, I knows all that; but that lace was a heap more valuable than
that toothache in that wuthless Dabney's jaw, which he could er wropped
up, and hunted out all the old sheets for you instid of that petticoat
with them real lace ruffles," was Mammy's firm rejoinder, while she
passed a feather duster over the table and rolled her eyes at Dabney.

"Let's let them both off this time, Mammy. Dabney can take the trunks
where they belong and lock them up," I said, as I went toward the dining
room, while she followed to minister upon my tardiness.

"Them was all your finest lingerings," she said as she plied me with
breakfast. "And they was all lost on menfolks. They hasn't even one lady
rode by while I had 'em on the line in the sunshine," she grumbled as
she finally retired to the kitchen.

After finishing my coffee I sauntered to the front of the house, led by
a chorus of hearty laughter in a fluty tenor voice, accompanied by a
bass growl, in which I was sure that father was recounting the scrape in
which his and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's anemone adventure had got them.
I assured myself that I was annoyed by this repeated early morning
invasion of ministerial calls and intended to retire to my room until it
was over, but without knowing why, I found myself in the library and
greeting the enemy.

"Please forgive us. The case was one of dire necessity," the Reverend
Mr. Goodloe pleaded, as he rose and took my hand in his, and held it in
such a way that I was forced to look in his face and smile, whether I
wished it or not.

"From ambush I saw you take them, and I was powerless to prevent," I
answered with a smile at father.

"I came over to ask you if you wouldn't like to go away out into the
Harpeth Hills on a mission with me this wonderful morning. I don't know
exactly whether I am called to officiate at a birth or a death or that
intermediate festivity, a wedding. This is the summons from an old
friend of mine:" As he spoke he held out to me a greasy paper on which
were a few words scrawled with a pencil.

"Parson we need you in the morning bad. Pleas