"Do you know what the whole kit and biling is so busy about?" said Aunt Mary as she surveyed with pride a new hen-house that Bud had just finished, in which I saw the trap nests over which she had disputed with the commissioner of agriculture. "They were just woke up by that speech of Adam's, and they are getting ready to show him what Riverfield can do when he gets back. When did you say you expect him, honeybunch?"
"Why, I thought Silas said you did," she answered absent-mindedly. "Now, you can have Bud, but not for keeps, because as I borned him I think I am entitled to work him." We all laughed as Bud and I betook ourselves and a large farm-basket full of late cabbage plants across to Elmnest.
"Miss Ann, please ma'am, make mother let me go to town to-night with Mr. Matthew and stay with Miss Bess. All her linen chest has come, and I want to see it," Polly Corn-tassel waylaid us and pleaded. I went back and laid the case before her mother.
"Well, I suppose it won't hurt her if all this marriage and giving in marriage don't get into her head. I aim to keep and work her at least two years longer to pay my trouble with her teething back," agreed Aunt Mary. "When did you say the wedding was going to be?"
"I heard that Mr. Owen Murray talking to Mr. Spain about his wooded piece of land over by the big spring the other night. Looks like you are a pot of honey, sure enough, child, that draws all your friends to settle around you."
"No, it's the back-to-the-land vogue, and this is the most beautiful part of the Harpeth Valley," I answered as I again began to depart with Bud and the cabbage plants.
"Adam told me one night that he was going to prove that the Garden of Eden was located right here. It was when your locusts were in full bloom and I asked him if he had run down Eve anywhere. Are you sure you don't know when he'll come back to see us all?" Aunt Mary's blue eyes danced with merriment.
"No," I answered, and went hastily back to Bud and left her muttering to herself, "Well, Silas _did_ say--"
All afternoon I stolidly planted the gray-green young cabbage sprouts behind Bud's hoe and refused even to think about Bess's wedding-chest. But at sunset I saw I must go into town to her dinner for the announcement of her wedding, and wear one of my dresses that I had sold and then borrowed back from her--or have a serious crisis in our friendship. I hadn't strength for that, and I had hoped that the fun of it all would make noise enough to wake some kind of echo in my very silent interior, but it didn't, though there was a positive uproar when Owen brought the whole Bird collateral family, who now have wings and tails and pin feathers, into the dining-room and put them in the rose bed in the middle of the table so as to hear his oratorical effort as expectant bridegroom.
