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John Jay gladly shuffled into the old clothes sent over from Rosehaven. They were many sizes too big, but he turned back the coat sleeves and hitched up his suspenders, regardless of appearances. Bud fared better, for the suit that fell to his lot was but slightly worn, and almost fitted him. As for Ivy, she was decked out in such finery that the boys scarcely dared to touch her.
He was sitting on the steps of the porch at Rosehaven with a guitar on his knee, and smiling tenderly into Sally Lou's blue eyes as he sang, "Oh, yes, I ever will be true!" It grew darker and darker. The katydids began their endless quarrel in the trees. A night-owl hooted dismally over in the woods. The children stopped talking, and sat in anxious silence.
So many of the shining berries slipped down his throat, so many things called his attention away from the brambly bushes, that sometimes it took hours for him to fill his battered quart cup. Usually his reward was a juicy pie, but this year Mammy changed her plan. Berries were in demand at Rosehaven, and she had very little time to spend in going after them.
I'll declare if there isn't anothah hole in yo' shirt this blessed minute!" The lecture that followed was not of the gala-day kind, but John Jay consoled himself by thinking that he would probably have had a cuffing instead had it happened on any other day. After breakfast Mammy went away to do a day's scrubbing at Rosehaven. The children spent most of the morning in watching the road.
Pity it hadn't a-happened to be the same day, then maybe Mis' Haven mought a give you somethin' like Mis' Alice give Jintsey's boy." John Jay had that same thought all the rest of the way to Rosehaven, but after they entered the brilliantly illuminated grounds he seemed to stop thinking altogether. It was a sight beyond all that his wildest imaginings had pictured. He did not recognize the place.
He wondered if Mammy had told her. The basket on the old woman's head was always interesting to these children, for it never came back from Rosehaven empty. The cook always saved the scraps for Sheba's hungry little charges. This evening John Jay kept his eyes fixed on it expectantly, as he followed it up the walk.
Sheba was expected to be at Rosehaven at seven o'clock, and John Jay was to take part in the performance on the lawn. It took a great deal of cross-questioning before Mammy fully understood the arrangement. She could readily see that her services might be desired in the kitchen, but it puzzled her to know what anybody could want of John Jay.
The roses that Mistress Alice had set out with her own white hands years ago climbed all over the front of the house, twining around its tall pillars, and hanging down in festoons from its stately eaves. Cuttings from the same hardy plant had been trained along the fences, around the tree-trunks and over trellises, until the place had come to be known all around the country as "Rosehaven."
He was afraid to look for fear of finding a mass of broken shells strewn over the ground. It was with a feeling of surprise that he saw the white ends of the top layer of eggs peeping out of their bed of bran, just as he had left them. With a sigh of relief he picked up the basket; then whistling gaily as a mockingbird, he set out once more in the direction of Rosehaven.
This bright June morning she stood in the door with a basket of fresh eggs in her hand, looking anxiously across the fields to the gables of Rosehaven, and grumbling to herself. "Heah I done promise Miss Hallie these fresh aigs for her bufday cake, an' no way to get 'em to her.
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