Andrew the Glad

"Did you people ever hear of the man who bought a fifty-dollar coon dog,

took him out to hunt the first night, almost cried because he thought he

had lost him down a sink hole, hunted all night for him, came home in the

daylight and found pup asleep under the kitchen stove?" demanded David as

he filled two long glasses with a simmering decoction, from which arose

the aroma of baked apples, spices, and some of the major's eighty-six

corn heart. "Caroline is my point to my little story. Have you two been

sitting in Mrs. Matilda's car or mine, or did you roost for a time on the

fence over there in the dark?"

"Please, David, please hush and give me a bird and a biscuit--I'm

hungry," answered Caroline as she sank on a cushion beside Mrs. Buchanan.

"According to the ink slingers of all times you ought not to be; but Andy

has already got outside of two sandwiches, so I suppose you are due one

small bird. That cake is grand, beautiful. I've put it away to eat all by

myself to-morrow. Andrew Sevier doesn't need any. He wouldn't know cake

from corn-pone--he's moonstruck."

Just at this point a well-aimed pine-cone glanced off David's collar and

he settled down to the business in hand, which was the disposal of a

bursting and perfectly hot potato, handed fresh from the coals by the

attentive Jeff.

And it was more than an hour later that the tired hunters wended their

way back to the city. Polly was so sleepy that she could hardly sit her

horse and was in a subdued and utterly fascinating mood, with which she

did an irreparable amount of damage to the stranger within her gates

as she rode along the moonlit pike, and for which she had later to make

answer. The woman's champion dozed in the tonneau and only David had the

spirit to sing as they whirled along.

Hadn't Phoebe stirred the sugar into his cup of coffee and then in an

absolutely absent-minded manner tasted it before she had come around the

fire to hand it to him? It had been a standing argument between them for

years as to a man's right to this small attention, which they both teased

Mrs. Matilda for bestowing upon the major. It was an insignificant,

inconsequent little ceremony in itself but it fired a train in David's

mind, made for healing the wound in his heart and brought its

consequences. Another reconstruction campaign began to shape its policy

in the mind of David Kildare which had to do with the molding of the

destiny of the high-headed young woman of his affections, rather than

with the amelioration of conditions in his native city. So, high and

clear he sang the call of the mocking-bird with its ecstasies and its

minors.