At last she was at liberty to fling her exhausted body down on the cool, patched, old linen sheets of the great four-poster which had harbored many of her foremothers and let herself drift out on her own troubled waters. Wrapped in the compassionate darkness she was giving way to the luxury of letting the controlled tears rise to her eyes and the sobs that her white throat ached from suppressing all day were echoing on the stillness when a voice came from the little cot by her bed and the General in disheveled nightshirt and rumpled head rose by her pillow and stood with uncertain feet on his own springy place of repose. "Rose Mamie," he demanded in an awestruck tone of voice that fairly trembled through the darkness, "are you a-crying?" "Yes, Stonie," she answered in a shame-forced gurgle that would have done credit to Jennie Rucker in her worst moments of abasement before the force of the General. "Does your stomach hurt you?" he demanded in a practical though sympathetic tone of voice, for so far in his journey along life's road his sleep had only been disturbed by retributive digestive causes. "No," sniffed Rose Mary with a sob that was tinged with a small laugh. "It's my heart, darling," she added, the sob getting the best of the situation. "Oh, Stonie, Stonie!" "Now, wait a minute, Rose Mamie," exclaimed the General as he climbed up and perched himself on the edge of the big bed. "Have you done anything you are afraid to tell God about?" "No," came from the depths of Rose Mary's pillow. "Then don't cry because you think Mr. Mark ain't coming back, like Mis' Rucker said she was afraid you was grieving about when she thought I wasn't a-listening. He's a-coming back. Me and him have got a bargain." "What about, Stonie?" came in a much clearer voice from the pillow, and Rose Mary curled herself over nearer to the little bird perched on the edge of her bed. "About a husband for you," answered Stonie in the reluctant voice that a man usually uses when circumstances force him into taking a woman into his business confidence. "Looked to me like everybody here was a-going to marry everybody else and leave you out, so I asked him to get you one up in New York and I'd pay him for doing it. He's a-going to bring him here on the cars his own self lest he get away before I get him." And the picture that rose in Rose Mary's mind, of the reluctant husband being dragged to her at the end of a tether by Everett, cut off the sob instantly. "What--what did you--he say when you asked him about--getting the husband--for you--for me?" asked Rose Mary in a perfect agony of mirth and embarrassment.