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This left me to help Sam gather up his tools and pick up the fragrant cedar chips for Mammy's vesper fire. "Now, the chimney next and Pete's housed," said Sam, as he sat down on a log right where I was crouching, filling the basket with the chips. "Are you happy, Bettykin?"
I stifled a sob and looked around to see if I could flee somewhere, when suddenly my groping hand was taken in two big, warm, horny ones, and Sam's deep voice said in the same old fish-hook tone: "Steady, Bettykin, and watch old Pete take his first hurdle."
"Good, Bettykin!" he said as he bent and raised me and the fierce woman to our feet. The others began to bustle and hustle the children, and men, brushing tears from faces that had begun to smile uncertainly, as if they had never smiled before.
"Not when this music and Julia and Pink hold out like that, Bettykin. It'll be bad enough when you do hear it," answered Sam, laughing down at me with the same wide-mouthed smile he had always used on me when holding something over my head and making me reach up for it. "Besides, it has been two whole weeks since I've had you," he added, and again his strong arms cradled as well as guided.
"I'll get Tolly to run you out in Redwheels while I do my promised dances, and then I'll be out early in the morning to help plan about Peter. And and, Sam, do you want to to give me that garden?" "Everything that is is yours, Bettykin," he answered as we went down the steps out on to the springy greening grass and across to the back gate.
"My, it's great to have a nice family party like this to plow for!" he said, as he led the mule into his stall and poured down his oats out of a bucket the Byrd ran to bring him. "Any news from Petie, Bettykin?" "I've got a letter from Peter that I haven't read, but one from Judge Vandyne that I have. Here it is read it," and I held the letter open for Sam to read over my shoulder.
"Done now, directly, only a trifle of polishing off and a look round," said Dr. Mann, at last; and Thorny, with a yawn that nearly rent him asunder, called out, "Thank goodness! Pack up, Bettykin." "I'm all ready!" and, shutting her book with a start, she slipped down from the easy chair in a great hurry.
"All right," said Sam, in the nice way he has of acquiescing in all my serious moods until they pass. "I'll be through after about three more rounds and then I'll come and help you. Say, Bettykin, what do you think of that for good land?" And as he looked back at the great square of black earth he had upturned, Sam's eyes flecked with the blue sky and snapped with enthusiasm.
"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!
"The Commissioner of Agriculture was out here five times last week, and a complete report on the whole place goes in to the Food Commission in Washington. Pretty good for a less-than-two-year-old farmer, eh, Bettykin?" And Sam tipped the rail enough to make me sure I was falling before he caught me.
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