Sam's reverence for his ancestral land proves his to be, and so afraid
of what I had done to him about the calf, and so hungry to see him, that
by the time the apple-float came on the table I thought it would have to
be fed to me by old Eph. Mother made it worse by remarking, as she put a
lovely dab of thick cream right on top of my saucer:

"Did you hear, father, that all of Sam's cows had been sick and that he
has lost his two finest calves?"

I couldn't stand any more. I gulped the cream, remarked huskily on how
warm the April night was, and escaped down the front walk to the old
purple lilac-bush by the gate where up to my seventh year I had always
kept house with and for Sam whenever he would enter into the bonds of an
imaginary marriage with me for an hour or two. Sam made a good father of
a hollyhock doll family whenever he undertook the relation, and provided
liberally for us all in the way of honey, locusts, and grass nuts.

"And I, maybe, let him lose the last calf he has when he is noble and
poor and alone," I sobbed into my silk sleeve, which was so thin that I
shivered in the cool April moonlight as I leaned against the gate and
looked away out at the dim blue hills that rim the Harpeth Valley, at
the foot of one of which I seemed to see Sam's and Byrd's hollow log.

"Hello, Bettykin! Out putting our hollyhock family to bed?" laughed a
crisp, comforting, jolly voice right at my elbow as a big, rough hand
ruffled my beautifully smoothed hair and then gave a friendly shake to
my left shoulder. "How do you find all our children after a three-year
foreign sojourn?"

"I told you five years ago, when I put it up on my head, to stop ruffing