Produced by David Garcia, Edna Badalian and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Page images were generously provided by the Kentuckiana Digital Library. [Illustration: "I GOT A CALL--A LAND CALL THAT I HAD TO ANSWER."] PARADISE RIDGE A ROMANCE BY MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS AUTHOR OF "THE MELTING OF MOLLY" ETC. ILLUSTRATED TO BERNICE LANIER DICKINSON CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE BOOK OF FOOD II. THE BOOK OF SHELTER III. THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER IV. THE BOOK OF LOVE ILLUSTRATIONS "I GOT A CALL--A LAND CALL THAT I HAD TO ANSWER" THE BYRD WAS ATTIRED IN MINIATURES OF SAM'S OVERALLS OVER PARADISE RIDGE I THE BOOK OF FOOD Nobody knows what starts the sap along the twigs of a very young, tender, and green woman's nature. In my case it was Samuel Foster Crittenden, though how could he have counted on the amount of Grandmother Nelson that was planted deep in my disposition, ready to spring up and bear fruit as soon as I was brought in direct acquaintance with a seed-basket and a garden hoe? Also why should Sam's return to a primitive state have forced my ancestry up to the point of flowering on the surface? I do hope Sam will not have to suffer consequences, but I can't help it if he does. What's born in us is not our fault. "Yes, Betty, I know I'm an awful shock to you as a farmer. I ought to have impressed it on you more thoroughly before you--you saw me in the act. I'm sorry, dear," Sam comforted me gently and tenderly as I wept with dismay into the sleeve of his faded blue overalls. "I can't understand it," I sniffed as I held on to his sustaining hand while I balanced with him on the top of an old, moss-covered stone wall he had begged me to climb to for a view of Harpeth Valley which he thought might turn my attention from him. "Have you mislaid your beautiful ambitions anywhere?" "I must have planted them along with my corn crop, I reckon," he answered, quietly, as he steadied his shoulder against an old oak-tree that grew close to the fence and then steadied my shoulder against his. "It is just for a little while, to get evidence about mud and animals and things like that, isn't it?" I asked, with great and undue eagerness, while an early blue jay flitted across from tree-top to tree-top in so happy a spirit that I sympathized with the admiring lady twit that came from a bush near the wall. "You are going back out into the world where I left you, aren't you?"