s ate all the best bits of meat,
pressing, meanwhile, with great cordiality, the pale, watery
sweet-potatoes upon the hungry schoolgirls. She was also exceedingly
contemptuous in manner as to anything approaching flirtation with the
few cavaliers of Wilbarger. It is rather hard to call them cavaliers,
since they no longer had any good horses; but they came from a race of
cavaliers, the true "armed horsemen" of America, if ever we had any. The
old-time Southerners went about on horseback much more than on foot or
in carriages; and they went armed.

"Bro, will you mend the gate-latch?" said Mrs. Manning at the
breakfast-table. They did not breakfast early; Mrs. Manning had never
been accustomed to early breakfasts: the work at the saw-mill began and
went on for three hours before the saw-miller broke his fast. Bro mended
the latch, and then, after a survey of the garden, went up to the open
window of the dining-room and said:

"Shall I water the flowers, Miss Marion? They look sadly this morning."

"Yes, if you please, Ambrose," replied the erect young person within,
who was washing the cups, and the few old spoons and forks she called
"the silver." The flowers were a link between them; they would not grow,
and everybody told her they would not save Bro, who believed in them to
the last, and watched even their dying struggles with unfailing hope.
The trouble was that she set her mind upon flowers not suited to the
soil; she sent regularly for seeds and slips, and would have it that
they must grow whether they wished to or not. Whatever their wishes
were, floral intentions necessarily escaping our grosser senses, one
thing was certain--grow they did not, in spite of Bro's care. He now
watered the consumptives of the day tenderly; he coaxed straggling
branches and gently tied up weak ones, saw with concern that the latest
balsam was gone, and, after looking at it for a while, thought it his
duty to tell its mistress.

"I am sorry, Miss Marion," he said, going to the window-sill, "but the
pink balsam is dead again."

"What can you mean by 'dead again'"? said a vexed but clear voice
within. "It can not be dead but once, of course."

"We have had a good many balsams," replied Bro apologetically, "and even
a good many pink ones, like this; I forget sometimes."

"That is because you have no _real_ love for flowers," said the irate
young mistress from her dish-pan: she was provoked at the loss of the
balsam--it was her la