"Now start on down! Don't you hear Miss Prissy playing the organ for you?" exclaimed Mother Mayberry from the steps. "Billy, lift up your feet, and Henny, you throw the first rose just where Miss Elinory told you to. Everybody watch Henny and throw a flower whenever he does. Aim them at the ground and not at each other or the company. We'll be just behind you. Now, Martin Luther, take Bettie by the hand and don't go too fast!"

"A little fun poked at the right time will settle most man conniptions," she added, in an aside to the relieved and admiring singer lady, as they prepared to follow in the wake of the bridal train.

And among all the weddings over all the land, that fill to a joyous overflowing almost every hour of the month of June, none could have been more lovely or happier than that of pretty Bettie Pratt, and the embarra.s.sed but adoring Mr. Hoover on Providence Road. The train of solemn, wide-eyed little flower bearers was received by the wedding guests, who were a.s.sembled around the Meeting-house door, with a positive wave of rapture and no hint of the previous hurricane of rebellion showed in their rosy, cherubic countenances. They separated at the designated point and according to instructions took their stand along the side of the walk from the gate to the steps. Billy stepped high, roly-poly little Bettie steered Martin Luther into place and Eliza had the joy of catching a glimpse of the pale face across the store-yard, peering out of the window with the greatest interest.

Then from the Pratt home, directly across the Road, came the Deacon and Bettie, and the enthusiasm at this point boiled up and ran over in a perfect foam of joy. And, indeed, the pair made a picture deserving of every thrill, Bettie in her dove gray muslin and the Deacon bedight according to Eliza's expert opinion of good form. He beamed like a gentle old cherub himself, while she giggled and blushed and nodded to the children as she stepped over the rain of roses, on up to the very door itself. Immediately following the children, the congregation filed in and settled itself for the long prayer, that the Deacon always used to open such solemn occasions.

The singer lady found herself seated between Mother Mayberry and the Doctor on the end of the pew, and out of the corner of her eye she essayed a view of his magnificence, but caught him in the act of making the same pa.s.s in her direction. They both blushed, and her smile was wickedly tantalizing, though she kept her eyes fixed on the Deacon's face as he began to read the words of the service in his sweet old voice, with its note of tender affection for the pair of friends for whom he read them. And she never knew why she didn't realize it or why she thought of permitting it, but as the impressive words enfolded the pair at the altar, one of her own small hands was gently possessed in a warm, strong one, and tightly clasped. For moments the pair of hands rested on the bench between them, hid by a filmy fold of the rose gown.

There was just nothing to be done about it that the singer lady could see, so she let matters rest as they were and gave her attention to trying to keep the riot in her own heart in reasonable bounds. However, it might have been a comfort to her to know that across the church, Buck had captured five of Pattie's sunburned fingers, and Mr. Petway was sitting so close to Miss Prissy that Mr. Pike came very near being irreverent enough to nudge the devout Judy. Then what a glorious time followed the solemn minutes in the church! The very twilight fell upon the entire wedding party still feasting and rejoicing, and it was under the light of the early stars that the guests had to wend their way home. Mother Mayberry was surrounded by a court of small boys, each one eager for her words of commendation on their more than exemplary conduct and she smiled and joked them as they escorted her to her door-step. Cindy had gone on ahead and a light shone from the kitchen window, which was answered by flashes all along and across the Road as the various households settled down to the business of recovering sufficient equilibrium to begin the conduct of the ordinary affairs of daily life at the morrow sun-up.

"Sit down here on the steps just a minute," pleaded the Doctor with trepidation in his voice, for the rose lady had found the strength of mind to reprove him for their conduct in church by ignoring him utterly at the wedding feast, even going to the point of partaking of her supper in the overwhelmed company of Sam Mosbey, who not for the life of him could have told from whence came the courage to ask for such a compliment, and the result of which had been to send him back later to the table in a half-famished condition; he not having been able to feast the eyes and the inner man at the same time.

"Can I trust you?" she demanded of the Doctor in a very small and reproving voice.

"If that is a condition--yes," he reluctantly consented, as he looked up at her in the starlight.

"Thank you--you were very grand," she said after she had settled herself in what she decided to be an uncompromising distance from him.

"You really graced the occasion."

"Miss Wingate," he said slowly, and he turned his head so that only his profile showed against the dusk of the wistaria vine, "you wouldn't really be cruel to a country boy with his heart on his sleeve and only his pride to protect it, would you?"

"I suppose it was unkind, for he was so hungry and couldn't seem to eat at all; but I saw Mrs. Pike giving him a glorious supper later, so please don't worry over him." Which answer was delivered in a meek tone of voice that it was difficult to hold to its ingenuous note.

The Doctor ignored this feint and went on with the most exquisite gentleness in his lovely voice that somehow brought her heart into her throat, and without knowing it she edged an inch or two closer to him and her hand made an involuntary movement toward his that rested on the step near her, but which she managed to stop in time. "You realize, do you not, dear lady, that your friendliness to--to us all, commands my intensest loyalty? You'll just promise to remember always that I do understand and go on being happy with us, won't you--us country folks of Providence Road?" The note of pride in his voice was struck with no uncertain sound.

"Oh, but it's you that don't--don't--" the singer lady was about to commit herself most dreadfully by her exclamation in the low dove notes that alone had no trace of the disastrous burr, when Mother Mayberry stepped out of the hall door and came and seated herself beside them.

"Well, of course, I know the Bible do say that they won't be no marriage or giving in marriage in the hereafter, but I do declare we all might miss such infairs as these, even in Heaven," she observed jovially. "Didn't everybody look nice and act nice? Course it was just country doings to you, honey-bird, but I know you enjoyed it some even if it were." Like all sympathetic natures Mother Mayberry fell with ease into the current of any thought, and the young Doctor reached out and took her hand into his with quick appreciation of the fact.

"It was so very lovely that it made me--made me want--" the daring with which the singer lady had begun her defiant remark gave out in the middle and she had to let it trail weakly.

"Well, I hope it made Mr. Petway want Prissy bad enough to ask her, along about moon-up," said Mother Mayberry in a practical tone of voice. "Seems like I hear they voices; and if he IS over there I don't see how he can get out of co'ting some. It's just in the air to-night--and WE'D better all be a-going to bed so as to get up early to start off. Tom Mayberry, seems to me as I remember it, you looked much less plain favored to-day than common. Did you have on some new clothes? And ain't you a-going to pa.s.s a compliment on Elinory and me, both with new frocks wored to please you?"

The Doctor laughed and as they all rose together he still held his mother's hand in his and instead of an answer he bent and kissed it with a most distinctly foreign-acquired grace.

"That's honey-fuzzle again, Tom Mayberry, if not in words, in acts,"

she exclaimed with a delighted laugh. "But pa.s.s it along to Elinory if only to keep her from feeling lonesome. Let him kiss your hand, child, he ain't nothing but a country b.u.mpkin that can't talk complimentary to save his life. Now, go get your bucket of water, sonny, and don't let in the cat!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEST ON PROVIDENCE n.o.b

"Why, honey-bird; troubles ain't nothing but tight, ugly little buds the Lord are a-going to flower out for us all, in His good time; maybe not until in His kingdom. I hold that fact in my heart always," said Mother Mayberry as she looked down over her gla.s.ses at the singer lady sitting on the top step at her feet.

"I know you do," answered Miss Wingate with a new huskiness rather than the burr in her voice, which made Mother look at her quickly before she drew another thread through her needle. "But I was just thinking about Mrs. Bostick and wishing--oh! I wish we could in some way bring her son back to her before it is too late. Yesterday afternoon when I started home she drew me down and asked me if when--when I went out into the world again I would look for him and help him. Is there nothing that can be done about it?"

"I reckon not, child," answered Mother Mayberry gently. "If Will was to come back now it would be just to tear up her heart some more. Last night, when I was a-settling of her for bed, I began to talk about the other five children she have buried under G.o.d's green gra.s.s, each in a different county, as they moved from place to place. I just collected them little graves together and tried to fill her heart with 'em, and when I left she was asleep with a smile on her face I ain't seen for a year. It's as I say--a buried baby are a trouble bud that's a-going to flower out in eternity for a woman. I'll find a lone blossom and she a little bunch. I'm praying in my heart that Will's a stunted plant that'll bloom late, but in time to be sheathed in with the rest. But bless your sweet feeling-heart, child, and let's keep the smile on our faces for her comfort! Woman must bend and not break under a sorrow load. Take some of them calcanthuses to her when you go down for one of them foreign junkets and ask her to tell you about them little folks of her'n. Start her on the little girl that favored the Deacon and cut off all his forelock with the scissors while he were asleep, so he 'most made the congregation over at Twin Creeks disgrace theyselves with laughing at his shorn plight the next Sunday. I've got to turn around 'fore sundown for I've got 'most a day's work to straighten out the hen house and settle the ruckus about nests. The whole sisterhood of 'em have tooken a notion to lay in the same barrel and have to be persuaded some. Now run on so as to be back as early as you can before Tom comes." And as Mother Mayberry spoke, she began to gather together her sewing, preparatory to a sally into the world of her feathered folk.

But before she had watched the singer lady out of sight down the Road, with her spray of brown blossoms in her one hand and her garden hat in the other, she espied young Eliza rapidly approaching from up the Road and there was excitement in every movement of her slim, little body and in every swish of her short calico skirts, as well as in the way her long pigtail swung out behind.

"Mother Mayberry," she exclaimed, as she sank breathless on the top step, "they is a awful thing happened! Aunt Prissy was 'most disgraced 'bout a box of soap and Bud and 'Lias and Henny might have got killed and Buck too, because he sent one to Pattie and wrote what was on the card. I've been so scared I am in the trembles now, but you said always pray to the Lord and I did it while I was a-running down to the store to beg Mr. Petway not to make her jump off from Bee Rock on the n.o.b like the lady Mis' Peavey read about in the paper did because the man wouldn't marry her that she was in love with. Fast as I were a-running I reckon the Lord made out what I said and beat me to him and told him--"

"'Liza, 'Liza, honey, stop this minute and tell me what you are a-talking about," demanded Mother Mayberry, with almost as much excitement in her voice as was trembling in that of the small talking machine at her feet. "Now begin at the beginning and tell me just what is the matter with your Aunt Prissy?"

"Nothing now," answered Eliza, taking a fresh breath, "she's a-going to marry Mr. Petway, only she won't know it until to-night and I've promised him not to tell her."

"What?" was all that Mother Mayberry managed to demand from the depths of her astonishment as she sank back in her rocking-chair and regarded Eliza with positive awe.

"Yes'um, and it were all about them two beautiful boxes of sweet-smelling soap that he bought in town and have had in the store window for a week. Buck bought one to send to Pattie for a birthday present and he wrote, 'When this you see, remember me,' on a card and put it in the box. I carried it over to her for him and Mr. Hoover jest laughed, and said Buck meant Pattie didn't keep her face clean. But Mis' Hoover hugged Pattie and whispered something to her and told Mr.

Hoover to shut up and go see how many children he could get to come in and be washed up for dinner. Buck was a-waiting for me around the corner of the store and when I told him how pleased Mis' Hoover and Pattie were, he--"

"But wait a minute, 'Liza," interrupted Mother Mayberry with a laugh, "them love jinks twixt Buck and Pattie is most interesting, but I'm waiting to hear about your Aunt Prissy and Mr. Petway. It's liable to be serious when two folks as old as they is--but go on with your tale, honey."

"Well, Buck wrote two of them beautiful 'Remember me' verses on nice pieces of white paper, in them curlycues the Deacon taught him, before he got one to suit him and he left one on the counter, right by the cheese box. While we was gone, along come 'Lias and Bud and Henny and disgraced Aunt Prissy."

"Why, what did them scamps do?" demanded Mother Mayberry, looking over her gla.s.ses in some perturbation as the end of the involved narration began to dawn upon her.

"They tooken the other box of soap outen the window and put the verse in it and carried it down to Aunt Prissy and told her Mr. Petway sent it to her. It was a joke they said, but they was good and skeered. I got home then and I seen her and Maw laughing about it and Aunt Prissy was just as pink and pleased and loving looking as Pattie were and Maw was a-joking of her like Mis' Pratt--no, Hoover--did Pattie and all of a sudden I knewed it were them bad boys, 'cause I seen 'em laughing in a way I knows is badness. Oh, then I was so skeered I couldn't swoller something in my throat 'cause I thought maybe Aunt Prissy would jump offen Bee Rock when she found she were so disgraced with Mr. Petway. I woulder done it myself, for I got right red in my own face thinking about it." And the blush that was a dawn of the eternal feminine again rose to the little bud-woman's face.

"It were awful, Eliza child, and I don't blame you for being mortified over it," said Mother Mayberry with a quick appreciation of the wound inflicted on the delicacy of the child, and the tale began to a.s.sume serious proportions in her mind as she thought of the probable result to the incipient affair between the elderly lovers that had been a subject of prayful hope to her for some time past. "What did you do?"

"I prayed," answered Eliza in a perfectly practical tone of voice, "and as I prayed I ran to Mr. Petway as fast as I could. He was filling mola.s.ses cans at the barrel when I got there and they wasn't n.o.body in the store, only I seen Bud and Henny peeping from behind the blacksmith shop and they was right white, they was so skeered by that time. Then I told him all about it and begged him to let Aunt Prissy have the box of soap and think he sent it, so her feelings wouldn't get hurted. I told him I would give him my seventy-five cents from picking peas to pay for it and that Aunt Prissy cried so when her feelings was hurted, and she thought so much of him that she kept her frizzes rolled up all day when she hoped he might be coming that night to see her and got Maw to bake tea-cakes to pa.s.s him out on the front porch and he MIGHT let her have just that one little box of soap."

"What did he say, child?" asked Mother Mayberry in a voice that was positively weak from anxiety and suppressed mirth at Eliza's own account of her management of the outraged lover.

"He didn't say a thing, but he sat down on a cracker box and just hugged me and laughed until he cried all over my dress and I hugged back and laughed too, but I didn't know what at. Then he told me that he didn't ever want Aunt Prissy to know about them bad boys' foolish joke 'cause he wanted to marry Aunt Prissy and didn't want her to find out that three young scallawags had to begin his co'ting for him."

"Did he say all that to you, 'Liza honey, are you sure?" asked Mother Mayberry, beginning to beam with delight at the outcome of the horrible situation.

"Yes'm, he did, and I went out and brought Bud and 'Lias and Henny in and he talked to 'em serious until 'Lias cried and Bud got choked trying not to. Then he give them all a bottle of soda pop and they ain't never anybody a-going to tell anybody else about it. He made them boys cross they hearts and bodies not to. I didn't cross mine 'cause I knew I had to tell you, but I do it now." And Eliza stood up and solemnly made the mystic sign, thus locking the barn door of her secret chambers after having quartered the troublesome steed of confidence on the ranges of Mother Mayberry's conscience.

"Well, 'Liza, a secret oughter always be wrapped up tight and dropped down the well inside a person, and suppose you and me do it to this one. And, child, I want to tell you that you did the right thing all along this line, and it were the Heavenly Father you asked to help you out that put the right notion in your heart of what to do."

"Yes'm, I believe He did, and He got hold of Mr. Petway some too, to make him kind about wanting to marry Aunt Prissy. He are a-going to ask her to-night and I promised to keep Paw outen the way for him, 'cause Paw WILL get away from Maw and come talk crops with him sometimes on the front porch. May I go out to the kitchen and get Cindy to make a little chicken soup for Mis' Bostick now? I can't get her to eat much to-day."

"Yes, and welcome, Sister Pike," answered Mother Mayberry heartily, and she shook with laughter as the end of the blue calico skirt disappeared in the hall. "The little raven have actually begun to sprout cupid wings," she said to herself as she went around the corner of the house toward the Doctor's office. "Co'ting are a bombsh.e.l.l that explodes in the big Road of life and look out who it hits," she further observed to herself as she paused to train up a shoot of the rambler over the office door.

The Doctor had just come from over the Ridge, put up his horse and made his way through the kitchen and hall into his office where he found his Mother sitting in his chair by the table. He smiled in a dejected way and seated himself opposite her, leaned his elbows on the table and dropped his chin into his hands.

"Now, what's your trouble, Tom Mayberry?" demanded his Mother, as she gazed across at him with anxiety and tenderness striving in glance and tone. "You've been a-going around like a dropped-wing young rooster with a touch of malaria for a week. If it's just moon-gaps you can keep 'em and welcome, but if it's trouble, I claim my share, son."

"I meant to tell you to-day, Mother," he answered slowly. After a moment's silence he looked up and said steadily, "I've failed with Miss Wingate--and I'm too much of a coward to tell her. I feel sure now that she'll never be able to use her voice any more than she can in the speaking tones and she--she will never sing again." As he spoke he buried his face in his hands and his arms shook the table they rested upon.

For a moment Mother Mayberry sat perfectly still and from the whispered words on her lips her son knew she was praying. "The Lord's will be done," she said at last in her deep, quiet voice, and she laid one of her strong hands on her son's arm. "Tell me about it, Tom. You ain't done no operation yet."