small weakness, this strong fair creature of the hills. Her husband must release himself from his absorbing cares and return simply for love of her—not at the call of his baby's wail.
So the doctor and his diminutive namesake drove contentedly away next morning in the great covered wagon, and Cassandra, standing by her mother's door, smiled and lifted her baby for one last embrace from his loving little uncle.
"I'm goin' to grow a big man, an' I'll teach him to make pictures—big ones," he called back.
"Yas, you'll do a heap. You bettah watch out to be right good and peart; that's what you bettah do."
David, not unmindful of affairs on the far-away mountain side, made it quite worth the while of the two cousins to stay on with the widow and run the small farm under Cassandra's directions, and she found herself fully occupied. She wrote David all the details: when and where things were planted—how the vines he had set on the hill slope were growing—how the pink rose he had brought from Hoke Belew's and planted by their threshold had grown to the top of the door, and had three sweet blossoms. She had shaken the petals of one between the pages of her letter on May-day, and sent it to remind him, she said.
Nearly a month later than he had intended to sail, David left