"Oh, I think he just wanted to see you because he likes you,"
answered Rose Mary with one of her lifted glances and quick smiles. "A
body can take their own liking for two other people and use it as a
good strong rope just to pull them together sometimes. I'm awfully
fond of Mr. Newsome--and you," she added as she came over from one of
the crocks with Peter Rucker's blue cup brimming with ice cold cream
in her hand and offered it to Everett.

Instead of taking the cup from her Everett clasped his fingers around
her slender wrist in the fashion of young Petie and thus with her hand
raised the cup to his lips. And as his eyes looked down over its blue
rim into hers the excitement in them died down, first into a very deep
tenderness that changed slowly into a quiet determination which seemed
to be pouring a promise and a vow into her very soul. Something in the
strange look made Rose Mary's hand tremble as he finished the last
drop in the cup, and again her lovely, always-ready rose flushed up
under her long lowered lashes. "Is it good and cold?" she asked with
a little smile as she turned away with the cup.

"Yes," answered Everett quietly, "it's all to the good and the milk
to the cold."

"Is that a compliment to me and the milk, too?" laughed Rose Mary from
over by the table as she again took up her butter-paddle. "It's nice
to find things as is expected of them, women good and milk cold, isn't
it?" she queried teasingly.

"Yes," answered Everett from across the table.

"And any way a woman must be a comfort to folks, just as a rose must