The great rolling bluegrass fields had exchanged their nunlike drab carpeting for one of a delicate green: the willows that fringed the creek were lightly touched with emerald: in the maples alternating with the willows, bees worked joyously: every red-bud tree on the wooded cliffs wore a drapery of delicate pink, like a tinted bridal veil, and on one side the little James farm, the rye in the last year's tobacco field of Vaughn Castle, spread out like a lake with waters newly dyed green. Even the all-winter bare back yard of the Ephriam Doggetts had made an attempt at redeeming its appearance: the mallow and the dock had begun to lift their heads, and next the fence, some sprigs of purple henbit showed themselves. Mr. Lindsay had resumed his work of tobacco stripping in late February--helping the belated tobacco-men, and afterward setting up hemp for the weather belated hemp growers, staying from Saturday evening until Sunday morning at the house of the always-open-door, and turn-nobody-away Doggetts. One Sunday morning, he came into the house, a half dozen yellow jonquils that bloomed under the ragged Althea bush, in a corner of the front yard, in his hand. "Well, Marshall," he suggested, "suppose'n you git out the razors, and let's me and you shave each other, and git ready to go to see our girls this evenin'." Wisdom had whispered in the ears of Mr. Lindsay, and, following her advice (though with reluctance) he had made no week day calls on the James family since his departure. On both the Sundays that had passed, however, he had called. The old man and Miss Nancy (her suspicions as to his intentions allayed by his absence, and Miss Lucy's demeanor) had treated him with cordiality: he had managed unobserved by them to exchange delightfully satisfactory whispers with his betrothed, and today he looked forward to a similar happy afternoon. The sunshine was no brighter than Mr. Lindsay's low cut shoes, when, after Mrs. Doggett's early dinner, he and Marshall lifted the gate that had no hinges: the dead autumn leaves in the ditch no browner than his tidy mustache, and a faint odor of "white rose" trailed on the air behind him. "How do we look, Ma?" invited Marshall pausing correctly to adjust the bit of white in his breast pocket. "Mighty well--mighty well!" encouraged Mrs. Doggett: "are you both a goin' the McLean road?" "Aw hush, Ann," interposed Mr. Doggett, "don't you know him and Marshall's tracks wouldn't nary one fit t'other's? Ef McLean is a gray lookin' house jest over the hill, Mr. Lindsay's a goin' to McLean!" Exactly three-quarters of an hour from the time of their vainglorious departure, Mr. Lindsay walked into the Doggett kitchen and sat quietly behind the stove, afflicted of mien and crestfallen to a degree.