other night as I was a-putting Petie to bed, while she and Bob was at
the front gate a-trying to trade on that there plowing, a mighty sweet
little verse come to me about

"'The little shoes in mother's hand
Nothing like 'em in the land,'

and the tears was in my eyes so thick 'cause I didn't have nobody to
say 'em to that one dropped down on Pete and made him think I was
a-going to wash his face, and sech another ruckus as she had to come
in to, as mad as hops! If I feel like it, I'm a-going to clean every
weed outen the garden for her next week to try and make up to her
for--"

"Aw, Mr. Rucker, M-i-s-t-e-r Rucker, come home to get ready for
supper," came in a loud, jovial voice that carried across the street
like the tocsin of a bass drum. The Rucker home sat in a clump of
sugar maples just opposite the Briars, and was square, solid and
unadorned of vine or flower. A row of bright tin buckets hung along
the picket fence that separated the yard from the store enclosure, and
rain-barrels sat under the two front gutters with stolid
practicability, in contrast to the usual relegation of such
store-houses of the rainfall to the back of the house and the planting
of ferns and water plants under the front sprouts, as was the custom
from the beginning of time in Sweetbriar. Mrs. Rucker in a clean print
dress and with glossy and uncompromisingly smoothed hair stood at the
newly whitewashed front gate. "Send him on home, Rose Mary, or
grass'll grow in his tracks and yours, too, if he can hold you long
enough," she added by way of badinage.