chance for a few minutes parley with the ever busy and practical Mrs.
Rucker. She balanced the gingham-clad bunch on its own wobbly legs
beside her, while through the pickets of the fence in greeting were
thrust the pink hands of Petie, the bond, who had followed in the wake
of his own maternal skirts. Shoofly responded to this attention with a
very young feminine gurgle of delight and licked at the chubby fist
thrust toward her like an overjoyed young kitten.

"Well, Monday is always a scrap day, so I try to kinder perk up my
Monday supper. Singing in the quire twict on Sunday and too much
confab with the other men on the store steps always kinder tires Mr.
Rucker out so he can't hardly get about with his sciatica on Monday,
and I have to humor him some along through the day. That were a mighty
good sermon circuit rider preached last night."

"Yes, I reckon it were, but my mind was so took up with the way Louisa
Helen flirted herself down the aisle with Bob on one side of her and
Mr. Crabtree on the other, I couldn't hardly get my mind down to
listening. And when she contrived Mr. Crabtree into the pew next to
Mis' Plunkett, as she moved down for 'em, I most gave a snort out
loud. Didn't Mis' Plunkett look nice in that second mourning tucker it
took Louisa Helen and all of Sweetbriar to persuade her into?"

"Lou Plunkett is as pretty as a chiny aster that blooms in September
and what she's having these number-two conniptions over Mr. Crabtree
for is more than I can see. I look on a second husband as a good
dessert after a fine dinner and a woman oughter swallow one when
offered without no mincing. I wouldn't make two bites of taking Mr.
Crabtree after poor puny Mr. Plunkett if it was me. Of course there
never was such a man as Mr. Satterwhite, but he was always mighty