e of great satisfaction over
the long lines of rapidly maturing peas and beans and heavy-leaved
potatoes, and in his mind calculated that a year's food for the small
family at Rosemeade was being produced right at their door under his
skilful hoe which he wielded at off times when he could leave the negro
hands to their work out on Rosemeade, their ancestral five hundred acres
of blue-grass meadows and loamy fields. Roger had for the summer quit
his slowly growing law practice in Adairville, enlisted as a doughty
Captain in the Army of the Furrows and was as proud of his khaki and
gingham uniform with their loam smudges as of his diploma from the
University of Virginia which hung in the wide old hall, the top one in a
succession of five given from father to son of the house of Adair. The
whole county was farming under the direction of Roger, and he had been
obliged often to work Patricia's garden by moonlight.

"I'm almost afraid to tell Grandfather," Patricia interrupted his food
calculations to say as they came around the corner of the wide-roofed
old brick house with its traceries of vines that massed at the eaves to
give nesting for many doves, and beheld the Major seated in his arm
chair on the porch which was guarded and supported by round, white
pillars around which a rose vine festooned itself. A faded, plaid wool
rug was across the Major's knees in spite of the fact that the evening
was so warm, and about his shoulders was a wide, gray knitted scarf. A
bent, white-haired old negro stood beside him filling his pipe for him
and serving as a target for the words issuing from beneath his waxed
white mustache that gave the impression of crossed white swords.

"War! What do they know about war, Jeff? We killed our first Yankee
before we were seventeen, and now they fight behind guns located six
miles away by squinting through double-decker opera glasses. War, I say
in these days--"

"Yes, sir," assented Jeff, in soothing interruption of what he
considered debilitating heat in the Major's words. "We whipped them
Yankees in no time but they jest didn't find it out in time to stop
killing us 'fore it all ended. Now, I'm going to help you to your room
and make you comfortable for I--"

"I see Patricia and Roger approaching and I'll wait to talk to them for
a few minutes, Jeff," answered the Major with a slight note of entreaty
in his voice.

"Jess a little while, then, jess a little while," consented the old
black