When Serena rose to go she proved to be the preferred hostess. Mr. Drake had brought a banana muskmelon from home, which he left with me in gentle propitiation for his desertion; and as the family accompanied Serena around the curving road I may have had a slight feeling of humiliation but no sense of injury. I knew that as an entertainer I could not compete with Len and Serena. They were reservoirs of mountain song and story, and their lingual flow never permitted a conversational vacuum. No wonder that I was passed by. Serena undulated from my sight, but left illumination behind her. In a whirl of emotion I went to my smoke-house and took down from my store as much as I could carry in a generous basket, and, taking a back trail, brought the stuff to Serena’s kitchen door while her guests were “chowing” with Len on the front porch. “The gardens haven’t come in yet,” I apologized, when Serena appeared at the door, “and I was afraid your canned stuff had given out.” It was always out by Christmas, and this was April. “Yes,” said Serena, “it’s jest about gone. An’, I declare, I was out o’ sugar an’ lard too! I’ll shore pay you back.” “Never mind that. The Drakes don’t get up here often. I want you to set them a good dinner.” “I told Len,” she said, with a touch of triumph, “that he’d got it all wrong ’bout you not wantin’ us to have so much company. I told him you’s as free-hearted as ef you’s born in the mountains.” With humbled step I turned into the trail home, and never again offered any admonitions against excessive hospitality. Through the spring and summer I continued to make apologetic contributions to Serena’s table, glad in this way to lessen any debt of festivity that I owed the community. A more trustful spirit seemed to reign on the mountain, and there was a happy impetus toward no one cared what. All might have gone well for a much longer period if, toward the end of the summer, I had not become too deeply concerned over the emaciated appearance of little Ross, and the fact that Len, long overburdened, showed signs of failing health, apparently evident to none but me. An encounter with Serena brought my feelings to the surface. She came in one day to tell me of an incident that had amused her “past common.”