Rose of Old Harpeth | Page 6

complete map and figure out just what your Uncle Tucker ought to plant in each place for years to come. It will kill a lot of time, and then it might be doing something for you dear people, who have taken a miserable, cross invalid of a stranger man in out of the wet and made a well chap of him again.
"Do you know what you have done for me? That day when I had tramped over from Boliver just to get away from the Citizens' Hotel and myself and perched upon Mr. Alloway's north lot fence like a miserable funeral crow, I had reached my limit, and my spirit had turned its face to the wall. I had been down South six weeks and couldn't see that I felt one bit stronger. I had just heard of this copper expedition from one of the chaps, who had written me a heedlessly exultant letter about it, and I was down and out and no strength left to fight. I was too weak to take it like a man, and couldn't make up my mind to cry like a woman, though I wanted to. Just as it was at its worst your Uncle Tucker appeared on the other side of the fence, and when he looked at me with those great, heaven-big eyes of his I fell over into his arms with a funny, help-has-come dying gasp. As you know, when I woke I was anchored in the middle of that puffy old four-poster in my room under the blessed roof of the Briars and you were pouring something glorious and hot down my throat, while the wonderful old angel-man in the big gray hat, who had got me out in the field, was flapping his wings around on the other side of the pillows. I went to sleep under your very hands--and I haven't waked up yet--except in ugly, impatient ways. I never want to."
"I wonder what you would be like--awake?" said Rose Mary softly, as she gently lowered the head of young Peter down into the hollow of her arm, where, in close proximity to Shoofly's, he nodded off into the depths. "I think I'm afraid to try waking you. I'm always so happy when Aunt Viney has snuffed away her asthma with jimson weed and got down on her pillow, and I have rubbed all her joints; when the General has said his prayers without stopping to argue in the middle, and Uncle Tucker has finished his chapter and pipe in bed without setting us all on fire, that I regard people asleep as in a most blessed condition. Won't you please try and stay happy, tucked away fast here at the Briars, without wanting to wake up and go all over New York, when I won't know whether you are getting cold or hungry or wet or a pain in your lungs?"
"Again I promise! Just wake me enough to go out and hoe for you is all I ask--your row and your kind of hoeing."
"Maybe hoeing in my row will make you finish your own in fine style," laughed Rose Mary. "And I think it's wonderful of you to study up our land so Uncle Tucker can do better with it. We never seem to be able to make any more than just the mortgage interest, and what we'll wear when the trunks in the garret are empty I don't see. We'll have to grow feathers. Things like false teeth just seem to be impossible."
"Do you mean to tell me that the Briars is seriously encumbered?" demanded Everett, with a quick frown showing between his brows and a business-keen look coming into his eyes.
"The mortgage on the Briars covers it as completely as the vines on the wall," answered Rose Mary quickly, with a humorous quirk at her mouth that relieved the note of pain in her voice. "I know we can never pay it, but if something could be done to keep it for the old folks always, I think Stonie and I could stand it. They were born here and their roots strike deep and twine with the roots of every tree and bush at the Briars. Their graves are over there behind the stone wall, and all their joys and sorrows have come to them along Providence Road. I am not unhappy over it, because I know that their Master isn't going to let anything happen to take them away. Every night before I go to sleep I just leave them to Him until I can wake up in the morning to begin to keep care of them for Him again. It was all about--"
"Wait a minute, let me ask you some questions before you tell me any more," said Everett, quickly covering the