scoffing, as usual. He'll keep what you give him, never fear, Rose
Mary; he's honor bound."

"Yes, that's what I want him to be--'honor bound.' You don't know
about him, but to-night I want to tell you, because I somehow feel you
love him--and us--and maybe if you know, some day you will help him.
Just after I came back into the Valley and found them all so troubled
and--and disgraced, something came to me I thought I couldn't stand.
Always it seemed to me I had loved him, my cousin, Uncle Tucker's son,
and I thought--I thought he had loved me. But when he went out into
the world one of the village girls, Granny Satterwhite's daughter, had
followed him and--yes, she had been his wife for all the time we
thought she was working in the city. They had been afraid--afraid of
Uncle Tucker and me--to acknowledge it. She was foolish and he
criminally weak. After his--his tragedy she came back--and nobody
would believe--that she was his wife. I found her lying on the floor
in the milk-house and though I was hurt, and hard, I took her into my
room--and in a few hours Stonie was born. When they gave him to me, so
little and helpless, the hurt and hardness all melted for ever, and I
believed her and forgave her and him. I never rested until I made him
come back, though it was just to die. She stayed with us a year--and
then she married Todd Crabtree and moved West. They didn't want
Stonie, so she gave him to me. When my heart ached so I couldn't stand
it, there was always Stonie to heal it. Do you think that heartaches
are sometimes just growing pains the Lord sends when He thinks we have
not courage enough?" And in the moonlight Rose Mary's tear-starred
eyes gleamed softly and her lovely mouth began to flower out into a
little smile. The sunshine of Rose Mary's nature always threw a bow
through her tears against any cloud that appeared on her horizon.