stand beside Uncle Tucker in the end of the long path.

"It's wonderful how devoted Mr. Newsome is to all his friends,"
answered Rose Mary with a blush. "He sent me three copies of the
Bolivar _Herald_ with the poem of yours he had them print last week,
and I was just going over to take you and Mrs. Rucker one as soon as I
got the time to--"

"Johnnie-jump-ups, Miss Rose Mary, don't you never do nothing like
that to me!" exclaimed Mr. Rucker with a very fire of desperation
lighting his thin face. "If Mis' Rucker was to see one verse of that
there poetry I would have to plow the whole creek-bottom corn-field
jest to pacify her. I've done almost persuaded her to hire Bob Nickols
to do it with his two teams and young Bob, on account of a sciattica
in my left side that plowing don't do no kind of good to. I have took
at least two bottles of her sasparilla and sorgum water and have let
Granny put a plaster as big and loud-smelling as a mill swamp on my
back jest to git that matter of the corn-field fixed up, and here you
most go and stir up the ruckus again with that poor little _Trees in
the Breeze_ poem that Gid took and had printed unbeknownst to me.
Please, mam, burn them papers!"

"Oh, I wouldn't tell her for the world if you don't want me to, Mr.
Rucker!" exclaimed Rose Mary in distress. "But I am sure she would be
proud of--"

"No, it looks like women don't take to poetry for a husband; they
prefers the hefting of a hoe and plow handles. It's hard on Mis'
Rucker that I ain't got no constitution to work with, and I feel it
right to keep all my soul-squirmings and sech outen her sight. The