They managed to keep Peter in bed until ten the next morning but only after his mother had promised to deliver two ladies to him at eleven and eleven-thirty--Mrs. Bob Lee Tenafee and Miss Ada. Mrs. Parker had better luck with them than with the doctor’s daughter; they came on the dot, willingly and cordially and curiously. With Miss Ada, who had the earlier appointment, Peter Parker was very gentle and very brief. “Will you give Glen a message for me at lunch, Miss Ada?” “Oh, indeed I _will_, Mr. Parker,” the spinster assured him fervently. “It’s very simple; you will just say, please, that I want _her_ to know from me, first, that I have proved it.” Mystified but obedient, she repeated it carefully--“You want _her_ to know from you, first, that you have proved it.” She rose from her chair and smoothed her shabby gloves. “Very well, Mr. Parker. I have a good memory, and I shall not forget a syllable. I will bid you good day,” she smiled a little wistfully. Peter, not quite steadily, hurried to open the door for her. “Thank you, and forgive the silly secrecy. I want her to know first, but--you will be glad for us--and with us, when you know, too!” He lifted her hand to his lips, and she flushed to a delicate old rose. “And you _will_ let me take you to call upon my Cousin Amos Tenafee?” she fluttered. “The very day I am presentable,” he assured her, a finger on his helmet of bandaging. He was rather more expansive with Mary-Lou Tenafee, though he gave her the facts of the case very simply and swiftly. “Well,” said Bob Lee’s widow, shaking her smartly sleek head, “I’m surprised--and I’m not! It always did worry me to have Cousin ’Gene push and pull that wild mountain boy into such speedy promotion. He’s a baa-lamb, my poor Cousin ’Gene. Goodness, if I ran Beulah-land the way he runs his mill--_your_ mill, too, I’m sorry to remember, Peter,” she gave him her pretty, comradely smile. He liked Mary-Lou Tenafee enormously; she seemed to him with her beauty and grace and charm, her firmly and capably run plantation, her sweetly and sternly reared little son, Bob Lee, II, her keen, sane interest in the affairs of her own small world and the big one beyond, a symbol of the New South. “The least jiggle, and I’d have been in love with her,” he reflected now. “That’s perfectly all right; I want to tear the Altonia down and rebuild, anyway. And I’ll want your help, Mary-Lou.” “You’ll have it, Peter Piper!” “About part-time schools and playgrounds and all that stuff, getting the right people interested, I mean.” “The right people are interested already, Peter,” she said loyally. “Don’t think we’re proud of mills like the Altonia! The leaven’s working, I promise you! Well, but--you’ve told me this about Luke Manders so I can break it to Cousin ’Gene?” She made a rueful face.