The next morning at about nine-thirty occurred Peter Vandyne's
introduction into real life. He took it gallantly with his head up and
swimming for shore.

The day was one of young May's maiden efforts offered with a soft smile
of tender sunshine and in a flutter of bird wing and apple-blow. Of
course, Sam had told me not to bring Peter out to The Briers until about
eleven o'clock, because he wanted to do some farm housekeeping, as I
afterward found out. But half past nine was the very limit of my
endurance, and I sat and fidgeted with the wheel while mother and Eph
packed us up with the inevitable basket for Byrd plus the also
inevitable "little ones" that daddy somehow managed to find for him.
These young were three small kittens, attended in their blindness by a
black-and-white-spotted mother cat, all safely laced into a large basket
and by that time resigned to their fate. I didn't mean to be
disrespectful to dear Peter in my thoughts, but somehow they reminded me
of him as he was led to farm life; and I laughed outright as Eph gave
Peter a parting pat and Redwheels and me a shove, while mother called
after us not to forget the sarsaparilla.

As long as I live I shall remember that journey along old Providence
Road with a lovely nature like Peter's. He glowed with his inward flame
there at my side, until I felt that it would be bad for him. Peter has
seen all kinds of wonderful scenery all his life; but of course, there
is none in the world anything like the Harpeth Valley. All the other in
the world is either grand or placid or swept and garnished and tended or
brilliant or moist, but this valley under Paradise Ridge is different.
Peter expressed it so that my throat tightened and I had to hold
steadier to the wheel as we passed an old farm wagon.