"Well, what's all this ruckus?" he demanded as he peered at them
across the light of his candle. "Have any kind of cyclone blowed you
from New York clean across here to Harpeth Valley, boy?"
"He has come back with the mercy of our Lord in his hands to save our
home; and you go put on your pants before your pipes get chilled,
Tucker Alloway," answered Aunt Viney in her most militant tone of
voice. "And, Rose Mary, you can take that young man on out of here now
so Amandy can take that shame-faced head of hers out of that feather
pillow. It's all on account of that tored place in her night-cap I
told her to mend. You needn't neither of you come back no more,
because we must get to sleep, so as to be ready to unpack before
sun-up and get settled back for the day. And don't you go to bed,
neither one of you, without reading Jeremiah twelfth, first to last
verse, and me and Amandy will do the same." With which Everett found
himself dismissed with a seeming curtness which he could plainly see
was an heroic control of emotion in the feeble old stoic who was
trembling with exhaustion.
Uncle Tucker, called to account for the lack of warmth and also
propriety in his attire, had hastened back to his own apartment and
Everett found him sitting up in his bed, lighting the old cob with
trembling fingers but with his excitement well under control. He
listened intently to Everett's hurried but succinct account of the
situation and crisis in his own and the Alloway business affairs, as
he puffed away, and his old eyes lighted with excitement at the rush
of the tale of high finance.
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