"Do you know what leaving Mother is like?" asked the young Doctor, as he looked down on her with tenderness in his gray eyes and Mother Mayberry's own quizzical smile on his lips. "It's like going to sleep at night with a last look at Providence Nob,--you wake up in the morning and find it more there than ever. She was THERE on sunny mornings over in Berlin and THERE on gray days in London and I had her on long hard hospital nights in New York. Just come with me on this trip and I promise she and Old Harpeth will be here when we get back. Please!" "I don't know," answered Miss Wingate in a small voice as she rubbed her cheek against the arm of his coat. "I'm in love with Tom Mayberry of Providence Road. I don't know that I want to go traveling with a distinguished physician on an important Government mission and attend Legation dinners and banquets and--I don't want to leave my Mother," and there was a real catch in the laugh she smothered in his coat sleeve. "Dearie girl," he exclaimed, looking down with delight at a small section of blush left visible against the rough blue serge of his coat, "you and Mother are--" "Sakes, you folks, I wish you'd try to listen when you are called at!" came in a sharp voice as Mrs. Peavey looked down upon them from over the wall near the barn. "One of them foolish Indiany chickens are stretched out kicking most drowned in a puddle right by the barn door, and there you both stand doing nothing for it. Tom Mayberry, pick it up this minute and give it to me! I'm a-going to put it behind my stove until Mis' Mayberry comes home. I've got some feeling for her love of chickens, _I_ have." "Oh, I didn't see it!" exclaimed Miss Wingate, in an agony of regret. "The dear little thing! Give it to me and I'll take care of it." "Fiddlesticks! Chickens ain't 'dear little things,' and I wouldn't trust neither one of you to take care of a flea of mine, with your philandering. Hand it here to me, Tom Mayberry, like I tell you!" And the Doctor hastened to pick up the little gasping bunch of drenched feathers, which Mrs. Peavey tucked in the corner of her shawl "Did you all hear that a car busted into another one down in the City day before yesterday and throwed the driver and broke a lady's arm and cut a baby's leg shameful? It was in the morning paper I saw down to the store; and a wind storm blew off a man's roof too." "I haven't read the paper yet," answered the singer lady in the subdued voice she always used in addressing Mother Mayberry's pessimistic neighbor. "Well, you oughter take interest in accidents if you are a-going to be a Doctor's wife. It'll be all in the family then and you can hear it all straight and maybe see some folks mended," answered Mrs. Peavey, and she failed to notice Miss Wingate's horrified expression at such a prospect. "How's Mis' Bostick, Tom? That is, how do your Mother say she are, for I couldn't trust your notion in such a case as her'n."