"Where's Peter?" I asked, as Sam came to unload me and a huge bag of smoke iris that old Mrs. Johnson had given me for my garden. There was also Byrd's basket from mother, and a pair of small alligators that daddy had got from Florida for him, having run out of natural animal inhabitants of the Harpeth Valley.
"Pete's off with the bit in his mouth--haven't seen him for three days," answered Sam as he lifted me and swung me way out into the middle of my own clover-pink bed. It was starred with sweet, white blossoms, having been treated according to Eph's directions and those of Grandmother Nelson's book.
"Peter off? Where? What's happened, Sam?" I exclaimed, with astonished anxiety.
"The play," answered Sam, calmly, as he lit his cob pipe and blew a ring of smoke. "It hit him in the middle of the night before last, and he wrote me a note. Mammy grubs him, and I haven't seen him since. I've paid the Byrd a half interest in the next young that happens to us not to go down the hill to the shack, and we're all just going on as usual."
"Maybe I'd better not go, either," I said, with awe and sympathy for Peter fairly dropping from the words as I uttered them.
"Betty," said Sam as he looked at me through a ring of smoke that the warm wind blew away over our heads, "you run just a little more sense to the cubic foot of dirt than the average, it seems to me. Come on down and watch them begin to cut wheat. It is one week ahead of time, so I can get all the harvesters and not a grain will be lost. They say it'll run sixty bushels to the acre. Think of that, with only a thirty-six record to beat in the Valley. It is that Canadian cross. The Commissioner is down there, and so is your admirer, Chubb. He wastes many hours riding over here to see you when you are in town on frivolous pursuits."
"Frivolous!" I echoed as we went up the path back of the house; and on our way over the hill I told him about Tolly and Edith. Sam laughed; he always does when I want him to; but his eyes were grave after a second.
"The mating season is a troublesome time, isn't it, Betty?" he asked, as he swung me to the top rail of the fence, vaulted over it, and held up his arms to lift me down on the other side; but I sat poised in midair to argue his proposition.