"I don't know, Elinory, and I've been a-wondering," answered Mother Mayberry as she sank down on the top step and took the tired child in her arms. "Oh," said Miss Wingate as she stood before her on the lower step and clasped her white hands against her breast, "do you suppose he is going to--to hurt me now?" "Child," answered the Doctor's mother quietly, with a quick sadness spreading over her usually bright face, "they ain't nothing in the world that can be as cruel as true love when it goes blind. Tom Mayberry is a good man and I borned, nursed and raised him, but I won't answer for him about no co'ting conniptions. A man lover are a shy bird and they can't nothing but a true mate keep him steady on any limb. You ain't showed a single symptom of managing Tom yet, but somehow I've got confidence in you if you just keep your head now." "But what can the matter be?" demanded Miss Wingate in a voice that shook with positive terror. "Well," answered Mother Mayberry slowly, "I sorter sense the trouble and I'll tell you right out and out for your good. Loving a woman are a kinder regeneration process for any man, and a good one like as not comes outen it humbler than a bad most times. Tom have wrapped you around with some sorter pink cloud of sentiments, tagged you with all them bokays the world have give you for singing so grand, turned all them lights on you he first seen you acrost and now he's afraid to come nigh you. I suspect him of a bad case of chicken-heart and I'm a-pitying of him most deep. He's just lying down at your feet waiting to be picked up." "I wonder where he is!" exclaimed Miss Wingate as a light flashed into her eyes and a trace of color came back to her cheeks. "You'll find him," answered the Doctor's mother comfortably, "and when you do I want you to promise me to put him through a good course of sprouts. A wife oughtn't to stand on no pedestal for a man, but she have got no call to make squaw tracks behind him neither. Go on and find him! A woman have got to come out of the pink cloud to her husband some time, but she'd better keep a bit to flirt behind the rest of her life. Look in the office!" "Well; Martin Luther," remarked Mother a few minutes later, as she lifted the absolutely dead youngster in her arms and rose to take him into the house, "life are all alike from Harpeth Hills to Galilee. A woman can shape up her dough any fancy way she wants and it's likely to come outen the oven a husband. All Elinory's fine songs are about to end in little chorus cheeps with Tom under Mother Mayberry's wings, the Lord be praised!" And over in the office wing the situation was about as Mother Mayberry's experienced intuitions had predicted. Miss Wingate found the young Doctor sitting in the deep window and looking out at Providence Nob, which the last rays of the sun were dying blood red, with his strong young face set and white. The battle was still on and his soul was up in arms.