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He was standing beside my narrow iron bed with his sleeves still rolled up, wiping his arms with a big white towel. He was smiling as he scrubbed at the corners of his nails, as though to make sure they were clean. The nurse on the other side of the bed was also smiling. So was the carrot-top with the loganberry beauty-spot. All I could see, in fact, was smiling faces.

But I finally observed and identified the loganberry pimple, and realized that the tom-tom beating was merely the pounding of the steam-pipes in that jerry-built western hospital, and remembered that I was still in the land of the living and that the red-headed surgical nurse was holding my wrist.

Should the new shoots of Loganberry vines, which come out in the spring, be left or cut away? If cut, will more shoots put out in the fall and be sufficient for the next year's crop? The Loganberry shoots which are growing should be carefully trained and preserved for next year's fruiting. The old canes should be cut away at the base after the fruit is gathered.

"Oh, plague take Bedelia!" snapped Mary V. But she nevertheless spent precious minutes wiping the butcher knife on Bedelia's clean dish towel, and putting away the butter and the bread, and mopping up the splatters of loganberry jam. Getting her "Desert Glimpses" through the kitchen window formed no part of Mary V's plans or desires.

Then Aunt Mollie pushed open the screen door and said come in and set up; so I came in and set up quickly, having fried pork tenderloin and fried potatoes, and hot biscuit and pork gravy, and cucumber pickles, and cocoanut cake and pear preserves, peach preserves, apricot preserves, loganberry jelly, crab-apple jelly, and another kind of preserves I was unable to identify, though trying again and again.

I forgot about the hateful metallic clink of steel things against an instrument-tray, and about the loganberry pimple on the nose of the red-headed surgical nurse who'd been sent into the labor room to help. I went wafting off into a feather-pillowy pit of infinitude. I even forgot to preach to myself, as I'd been doing for the last month or two.

I don't want any more sessions with Bedelia like I had last time you left the kitchen all messed up with your candy. What are you doing?" Mary V licked a dab of loganberry jelly from her left thumb and answered with her face turned toward the open window nearest the porch where her mother sat rocking peacefully. "Oh, for gracious sake, mom! I'm only putting up a little lunch before I go to bed.