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 sympathy that showed in his eyes with his business tone of voice. "Is it Gideon Newsome who holds this mortgage?"

"Why, yes, how did you know?" asked Rose Mary with a mild surprise in her eyes as she raised them to his, bent intently on her. "Uncle Tucker had to get the money from him six years ago. It—it was a debt of honor—he—we had to pay." A rich crimson spread itself over Rose Mary's brow and cheeks and flooded down her white neck under the folds of her blue dress across her breast. Tears rose to her eyes, but she lifted her head proudly and looked him straight in the face. "There is a reason why I would give my life—why I do and must give my life to protecting them from the consequences of the disaster. No sacrifice is too great for me to make to save their home for them."

"Do you 

 Prev. P 13/117 next