Rose of Old Harpeth. Maria Thompson Daviess

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      "And do you think you can dig some more in the fields? Don't happiness and hoe mean the same thing to most men?" she questioned with a laugh.

      "Yes, hoe to the death and the devil take the last man at the end of the row, fortune to the first!" answered Everett with a return of his cynical look and tone.

      "Oh, but in the world some men just go along and chop down ugly weeds, stir up the good, smelly earth for things to grow in, reach over to help the man in the next furrow if he needs it, and all come home at sundown together—and the women have the supper ready. That's the kind of hoeing I want you to do—please dig me up those teeth for Aunt Viney and I'll have johnny-cake and fried chicken waiting for you every night. Please, sir, promise!" And Rose Mary's voice sounded its coaxing, comforting note, while her deep eyes brooded over him.

      "I promise," answered Everett with a laugh. "I tell you what I think I will do. As I understand it, the Briars has about three hundred acres, all told. I have been all over it for the oil and there is none in any paying quantities. But in this kind of formation any number of other things may crop up or out. I am going to go over every acre of it carefully and find exactly what can be expected of it. There may be nothing of any value in a mineral way, but as I go I am going to make soil tests, and then put it all down on a complete map and figure out just what your Uncle Tucker ought to plant in each place for years to come. It will kill a lot of time, and then it might be doing something for you dear people, who have taken a miserable, cross invalid of a stranger man in out of the wet and made a well chap of him again.

      "Do you know what you have done for me? That day when I had tramped over from Boliver just to get away from the Citizens' Hotel and myself and perched upon Mr. Alloway's north lot fence like a miserable funeral crow, I had reached my limit, and my spirit had turned its face to the wall. I had been down South six weeks and couldn't see that I felt one bit stronger. I had just heard of this copper expedition from one of the chaps, who had written me a heedlessly exultant letter about it, and I was down and out and no strength left to fight. I was too weak to take it like a man, and couldn't make up my mind to cry like a woman, though I wanted to. Just as it was at its worst your Uncle Tucker appeared on the other side of the fence, and when he looked at me with those great, heaven-big eyes of his I fell over into his arms with a funny, help-has-come dying gasp. As you know, when I woke I was anchored in the middle of that puffy old four-poster in my room under the blessed roof of the Briars and you were pouring something glorious and hot down my throat, while the wonderful old angel-man in the big gray hat, who had got me out in the field, was flapping his wings around on the other side of the pillows. I went to sleep under your very hands—and I haven't waked up yet—except in ugly, impatient ways. I never want to."

      "I wonder what you would be like—awake?" said Rose Mary softly, as she gently lowered the head of young Peter down into the hollow of her arm, where, in close proximity to Shoofly's, he nodded off into the depths. "I think I'm afraid to try waking you. I'm always so happy when Aunt Viney has snuffed away her asthma with jimson weed and got down on her pillow, and I have rubbed all her joints; when the General has said his prayers without stopping to argue in the middle, and Uncle Tucker has finished his chapter and pipe in bed without setting us all on fire, that I regard people asleep as in a most blessed condition. Won't you please try and stay happy, tucked away fast here at the Briars, without wanting to wake up and go all over New York, when I won't know whether you are getting cold or hungry or wet or a pain in your lungs?"

      "Again I promise! Just wake me enough to go out and hoe for you is all I ask—your row and your kind of hoeing."

      "Maybe hoeing in my row will make you finish your own in fine style," laughed Rose Mary. "And I think it's wonderful of you to study up our land so Uncle Tucker can do better with it. We never seem to be able to make any more than just the mortgage interest, and what we'll wear when the trunks in the garret are empty I don't see. We'll have to grow feathers. Things like false teeth just seem to be impossible."

      "Do you mean to tell me that the Briars is seriously encumbered?" demanded Everett, with a quick frown showing between his brows and a business-keen look coming into his eyes.

      "The mortgage on the Briars covers it as completely as the vines on the wall," answered Rose Mary quickly, with a humorous quirk at her mouth that relieved the note of pain in her voice. "I know we can never pay it, but if something could be done to keep it for the old folks always, I think Stonie and I could stand it. They were born here and their roots strike deep and twine with the roots of every tree and bush at the Briars. Their graves are over there behind the stone wall, and all their joys and sorrows have come to them along Providence Road. I am not unhappy over it, because I know that their Master isn't going to let anything happen to take them away. Every night before I go to sleep I just leave them to Him until I can wake up in the morning to begin to keep care of them for Him again. It was all about—"

      "Wait a minute, let me ask you some questions before you tell me any more," said Everett, quickly covering the sympathy that showed in his eyes with his business tone of voice. "Is it Gideon Newsome who holds this mortgage?"

      "Why, yes, how did you know?" asked Rose Mary with a mild surprise in her eyes as she raised them to his, bent intently on her. "Uncle Tucker had to get the money from him six years ago. It—it was a debt of honor—he—we had to pay." A rich crimson spread itself over Rose Mary's brow and cheeks and flooded down her white neck under the folds of her blue dress across her breast. Tears rose to her eyes, but she lifted her head proudly and looked him straight in the face. "There is a reason why I would give my life—why I do and must give my life to protecting them from the consequences of the disaster. No sacrifice is too great for me to make to save their home for them."

      "Do you mind telling me how much the mortgage is for?" asked Everett, still in his cool, thoughtful voice.

      "For ten thousand dollars," answered Rose Mary. "The land is worth really less than fifteen. Nobody but such a—such a friend as Mr. Newsome would have loaned Uncle Tucker so much. He—he has been very kind to us. I—I am very grateful to him and I—" Rose Mary faltered and dropped her eyes. A tear trembled on the edge of her black lashes and then splashed on to the chubby cheek of Peter the reposer.

      "I see," said Everett coolly, and a flint tone made his usually rich voice harsh and tight. For a few minutes he sat quietly looking Rose Mary over with an inscrutable look in his eyes that finally faded again into the utter world weariness. "I see—and so the bargain and sale goes on even on Providence Road under Old Harpeth. But the old people will never have to give up the Briars while you are here to pay the price of their protection, Rose Mary. Never!"

      "I don't believe they will—my faith in Him makes me sure," answered Rose Mary with lovely unconsciousness as she raised large, comforted eyes to Everett's. "I don't know how I'm going to manage, but somehow my cup of faith seems to get filled each day with the wine of courage and the result is mighty apt to be a—song." And Rose Mary's face blushed out again into a flowering of smiles.

      "A sort of cup of heavenly nectar," answered Everett with an answering smile, but the keen look still in his eyes. "See here, I want you to promise me something—don't ever, under any circumstances, tell anybody that I know about this mortgage. Will you?"

      "Of course, I won't if you tell me not to," answered Rose Mary immediately. "I don't like to think or talk about it. I only told you because you wanted to help us. Help offers are the silver linings to trouble clouds, and you brought this one down on yourself, didn't you? Of course, it's selfish and wrong to tell people about your anxieties, but there is just no other way to get so close to a friend. Don't you think perhaps sometimes the Lord doesn't bother to 'temper the winds,' but just leads you up on the sheltered side of somebody who is stronger than you are and leaves you there until your storm is over?"

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