Can't
you come with me to see 'em now, Rose Mary? It won't be any fun until
you see em!" The General had by this time lined up in the doorway with
Uncle Tucker, and Tobe's black head and keen face peered over his
shoulder. The expression in all three pairs of eyes fixed on hers was
the same--the wild desire to make her presentation at the interesting
court Dame Nature was holding in the barn. A most natural masculine
instinct for feminine interpretive companionship when face to face
with the miracle of maternity.
"Just one more crock of milk to skim and I can go," answered Rose Mary
as she poised the skimmer over the last yellow surface down the line
of huge, brown, earthen bowls that in Harpeth Valley were known as
crocks. The milk-house was cool and clean and smelled of the fresh
cream lifted from the milk into the stone jars to be clabbered for the
to-morrow churning. And Rose Mary herself was a fresh, fragrant
incarnation of the spirit of a spring sun-dawn that had come over the
Ridge from Old Harpeth. Her merry voice floated out over the hillside
as she followed in the wake of Uncle Tucker, Stonie and Tobe, with the
provender for the new arrivals, and it made its way as a faint echo of
a dream through one of the vine-covered, gable windows of the Briars
and the effect thereof was well-nigh instantaneous.
Everett, after a hasty and almost as incomplete toilet as the one made
by the General in his excitement, arrived on the scene of action just
in time to witness the congratulatory interview between Mrs.
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