there was no resurrection for
the larkspurs and pansies upon which the little boots of Miss Susie
Barringer landed. Yet she was not of the coarse peasant type, though her
cheeks were so rosy as to cause her great heaviness of heart on Sunday
mornings, and her blue lawn dress was as full as it could afford from
shoulders to waist. She was a neat, hearty and very pretty country girl,
with a slightly freckled face, and rippled brown hair, and astonished blue
eyes, but perfectly self-possessed, and graceful as a young quail.

A young man's ears are quick to catch the rustling of a woman's dress. The
flight of this plump bird in its fluttering blue plumage over the
rail-fence caused our young man to look up from his spading: the scowl was
routed from his brow by a sudden incursion of blushes, and his mouth was
attacked by an awkward smile.

The young lady nodded, and was hurrying past. The scowl came back in
force, and the smile was repulsed from the bearded mouth with great loss:
"Miss Tudie, are you in a hurry?"

The lady thus addressed turned and said, in a voice that was half pert and
half coaxing, "No particular hurry. Al, I've told you a dozen times not to
call me that redicklis name."

"Why, Tudie, I hain't never called you nothing else sence you was a little
one so high. You ort to know yer own name, and you give yerself that name
when you was a yearling. Howsom-ever, ef you don't like it now, sence
you've been to Jacksonville, I reckon I can call you Miss Susie--when I
don't disremember."

The frank amende seemed to satisfy Miss Susie, for she at once interrupted
in the kindest manner: "Never mind, Al Golyer: you can call me what you
are a-mind to." Then, as if conscious of the feminine inconsistency, she
changed the subject by asking, "What are you going to do with that great
hole?--big enough to bury a fellow."

"I'm going to plant this here seedlin', that growed up in Colonel Blood's
pastur', nobody knows how: belike somebody was eatin' an apple and throwed
the core down-like. I'm going to plant a little orchard here next spring,
but the colonel and me, we reckoned this one 'ud be too old by that time
for moving, so I thought I'd stick it in now, and see what come out'n it.
It's a powerful thrifty chunk of a saplin'."

"Yes. I speak for the first peck of apples off'n it. Don't forget.
Good-morning."

"Hold on a minute, Miss Susan, twell I git my coat. I'll walk down a piece
with you. I have got somethin