"Oh, what would I have done without Stonie, Mr. Crabtree!" exclaimed Rose Mary with a deep sadness coming into her lovely eyes. "You know how it was!" she added softly, claiming his sympathy with a little gesture of her hand. "Yes, I do know," answered the store-keeper, his big heart giving instant response to the little cry. "And on him you've done given a lesson in child raising to the whole of Sweetbriar. They ain't a child on the Road, girl or boy, that ain't being sorter patterned after the General by they mothers. And the way the women are set on him is plumb funny. Now Mis' Plunkett there, she's got a little tin bucket jest to hold cakes for nobody but Stonie Jackson, which he distributes to the rest, fair and impartial. I kinder wisht Mis' Plunkett would be a little more free with--with--" And the infatuated old bachelor laughed sheepishly at Rose Mary across her butter-bowl. "When a woman bakes little crisp cakes of affection in her heart, and the man she wants to have ask her for them don't, what must she do?" asked Rose Mary with a little laugh that nevertheless held a slight note of genuine inquiry in it. "Just raise the cover of the bucket and let him get a whiff," answered Mr. Crabtree, shaking with amusement. "'Tain't no use to offer a man no kind of young lollypop when he have got his mouth fixed on a nice old-fashioned pound-cake woman," he added in a ruthful tone of voice as he and Rose Mary both laughed over the trying plight in which he found his misguided love affairs. "There comes that curly apple puff now. Howdy, Louisa Helen; come across the plank and I'll give you this chair if I have to." "I don't wanter make you creak your joints," answered Louisa Helen with a pert little toss of her curly head as she passed him and stood by Rose Mary's table. "Miss Rose Mary, I wanter to show you this Sunday waist I've done made Maw and get you to persuade her some about it for me. I put this little white ruffle in the neck and sleeves and a bunch of it down here under her chin, and now she says I've got to take it right off. Paw's been dead five years, and I've most forgot how he looked. Oughtn't she let it stay?" "I think it looks lovely," answered Rose Mary, eying the waist with enthusiasm. "I'll come down to see your mother and beg her to let it stay as soon as I get the butter worked. Didn't she look sweet with that piece of purple lilac I put in her hair the other night? Did she let that stay?" "Yes, she did until Mr. Crabtree noticed it, and then she threw it away. Wasn't he silly?" asked Louisa Helen with a teasing giggle at the blushing bachelor.