how it was!" she added softly, claiming his sympathy with a little
gesture of her hand.

"Yes, I do know," answered the store-keeper, his big heart giving
instant response to the little cry. "And on him you've done given a
lesson in child raising to the whole of Sweetbriar. They ain't a child
on the Road, girl or boy, that ain't being sorter patterned after the
General by they mothers. And the way the women are set on him is plumb
funny. Now Mis' Plunkett there, she's got a little tin bucket jest to
hold cakes for nobody but Stonie Jackson, which he distributes to the
rest, fair and impartial. I kinder wisht Mis' Plunkett would be a
little more free with--with--" And the infatuated old bachelor laughed
sheepishly at Rose Mary across her butter-bowl.

"When a woman bakes little crisp cakes of affection in her heart, and
the man she wants to have ask her for them don't, what must she do?"
asked Rose Mary with a little laugh that nevertheless held a slight
note of genuine inquiry in it.

"Just raise the cover of the bucket and let him get a whiff," answered
Mr. Crabtree, shaking with amusement. "'Tain't no use to offer a man
no kind of young lollypop when he have got his mouth fixed on a nice
old-fashioned pound-cake woman," he added in a ruthful tone of voice
as he and Rose Mary both laughed over the trying plight in which he
found his misguided love affairs. "There comes that curly apple puff
now. Howdy, Louisa Helen; come across the plank and I'll give you this
chair if I have to."

"I don't wanter make you creak your joints," answered Louisa Helen
with a pert little toss of her curly head as she passed him and stood