performance. And in the talented aggregation of performers there was
of course just one rôle that could have been assumed by General
Jackson, that of ringmaster; so to that end he sat on the floor of the
barn beside the sleeping puppies and young Tucker and plaited the lash
by means of which he intended to govern the courses of his stars.

And it was here that Everett found him a few minutes later as he
walked rapidly up the milk-house path and stood in the barn door in
evident hurried search for somebody or some thing.

"Hello, General," he said with a smile at the barrel full of sleepers
at Stonie's side, "do you know where Rose Mary is?"

"Yes," answered the General, "she are in her room putting buttermilk
on the five freckles that comed on her nose when she hoed out in the
garden without no sunbonnet. I found 'em all for her this morning, and
she don't like 'em. You can go on in and see if they are any better
for her, I ain't got the time to fool with 'em now."

"Not for worlds!" exclaimed Everett as he sat down on an upturned peck
measure in close proximity to the barrel. "Have you decided to have
Mrs. Poteet and Mrs. Sniffer swap--er--puppies, Stonie?" he further
remarked.

"No, I didn't," answered Stonie with one of his rare smiles which made
him so like Rose Mary that Everett's heart glowed within him. Stonie
was, as a general thing, as grave as a judge, with something
hauntingly, almost tragically serious in his austere young face, but
his smiles when they came were flashes of the very divinity of youth
and were a strange incarnation of the essence of Rose Mary's cousinly