“Oh, I cannot bear to have you and Ivory cooking for yourselves!” exclaimed Waitstill, the tears starting again from her eyes. “I must come over the next time when you are at home, Rod, and I can help you make something nice for supper. “We get along pretty well,” said Rodman contentedly. “I love book-learning like Ivory and I'm going to be a schoolmaster or a preacher when Ivory's a lawyer. Do you think Patty'd like a schoolmaster or a preacher best, and do you think I'd be too young to marry her by and by, if she would wait for me?” “I didn't think you had any idea of marrying Patty,” laughed Waitstill through her tears. “Is this something new?” “It's not exactly new,” said Rod, jumping along like a squirrel in the path. “Nobody could look at Patty and not think about marrying her. I'd love to marry you, too, but you re too big and grand for a boy. Of course, I'm not going to ask Patty yet. Ivory said once you should never ask a girl until you can keep her like a queen; then after a minute he said: 'Well, maybe not quite like a queen, Rod, for that would mean longer than a man could wait. Shall we say until he could keep her like the dearest lady in the land?' That 's the way he said it.--You do cry dreadfully easy to-day, Waity; I'm sure you barked your leg or skinned your knee when you fell down.--Don't you think the 'dearest lady in the land' is a nice-sounding sentence?” “I do, indeed!” cried Waitstill to herself as she turned the words over and over trying to feed her hungry heart with them. “I love to hear Ivory talk; it's like the stories in the books. We have our best times in the barn, for I'm helping with the milking, now. Our yellow cow's name is Molly and the red cow used to be Dolly, but we changed her to Golly, 'cause she's so troublesome. Molly's an easy cow to milk and I can get almost all there is, though Ivory comes after me and takes the strippings. Golly swishes her tail and kicks the minute she hears us coming; then she stands stiff-legged and grits her teeth and holds on to her milk HARD, and Ivory has to pat and smooth and coax her every single time. Ivory says she's got a kind of an attachment inside of her that she shuts down when he begins to milk.” “We had a cross old cow like that, once,” said Waitstill absently, loving to hear the boy's chatter and the eternal quotations from his beloved hero. “We have great fun cooking, too,” continued Rod. “When Aunt Boynton was first sick she stayed in bed more, and Ivory and I hadn't got used to things. One morning we bound up each other's burns. Ivory had three fingers and I two, done up in buttery rags to take the fire out. Ivory called us 'Soldiers dressing their Wounds after the Battle.' Sausages spatter dreadfully, don't they? And when you turn a pancake it flops on top of the stove. Can you flop one straight, Waity?”