“Tell me about it,” Amanda demanded, eagerly. “What was it Jeff was sayin' about Bart Perry?” “Oh, Bart was squelched in good fashion.” Mrs. Rundel glanced at the shadowy shapes of her husband and son, and then back to the eager face of the questioner. “You know what a stuck-up fool he is. He come there to run things, and he set in at it from the start. He hushed us up when we was all havin' a good time talkin', and begun a long-winded tirade about the big singin' he'd done over at Darley when he was workin' in the cotton-mill. He pointed to our song-books, which have shaped notes, you know, and sniffed, and said they belonged to the backest of the backwoods--said the notes looked like children's toy play-blocks, chickencoops, dog-houses, an' what not. He laughed, but nobody else did. He was in for burnin' the whole pile and layin' out more money for the new-fangled sort.” “I always knowed he was a fool for want o' sense,” Amanda joined in, sympathetically. “A peddler tried to sell me a song once that he said was all the go in Atlanta; but when I saw them mustard-seed spots, like tadpoles on a wire fence, I told him he couldn't take _me_ in. Anybody with a grain o' sense knows it's easier to sing notes that you can tell apart than them that look pine blank alike.” “Some folks say it don't take long to learn the new way,” Mrs. Rundel remarked, from the standpoint of a professional; “but as Jeff said, we hain't got any time to throw away when we all want to sing as bad as we do.” “Well, you'd better go in and take that dress off,” Amanda advised, as she reached out and caught the hem of the starched skirt and pulled it down a little. “It shrinks every time it's washed, and you'll want to wear it again right off, I'll bound you.” “I don't want to wrinkle it any more than I have to,” Mrs. Rundel answered. “I want it to look nice next Sunday. We hold two sessions, mornin' and evenin'; and next week--the day hasn't been set yet--we are goin' to have a nip-and-tuck match with the Shady Grove class.” “That will be a heap o' fun,” Amanda said, as her sister passed her and disappeared within. For a few minutes the trio in the yard were silent. Ralph Rundel's pipe glowed in the darkness like a thing of fitful moods. Paul had not heard a word of the foregoing conversation. Young as he was, he had many things to think of. The affair with the Harris boys flitted across his mind; in that, at least, he was satisfied; the vision of the fleeing ruffians vaguely soothed him. Something he had read in his book that day about Napoleon came back to him. It was the flashing of her sister's candle across the grass, as Mrs. Rundel passed before a window, that drew Amanda's thoughts back to a subject of which she was fond.