At the Cleaverage place they were making ready for the noonday meal when Lance brought [85] his news home. The table, with its cloth of six flour-sacks sewed end to end, was set in the cool entry. The Dutch oven, half buried in ashes, was full of buttermilk-dodgers, keeping hot. At the other side of the broad hearthstone, Roxy Griever bent above a dinner-pot dishing up white beans and dumplings. Beside her Mary Ann Martha held a small yellow bowl and made futile dabs with a spoon she had herself whittled from a bit of shingle, trying to get beans into it. Her mother's reproofs dropped upon her tousled and incorrigible head with the regularity of clockwork. "You, Mary Ann Marthy, I do know in my soul you' the worst child the Lord ever made: Where do you expect to go to when you die? Look at that thar good victuals all splattered out in the ashes. That's yo' doin'. You' jest adzackly like yo' uncle Lance." Then Sylvane, who was shaping an axe-helve in the doorway, looked up and said, "Here comes Lance himself." And Kimbro Cleaverage pushed another chair towards the table. "Well," said the bridegroom expectant, looking about on the shadowed interior of the cabin, dim to his eyes after the glare outside, "I've got a invite for you-all to a weddin'." "Not you and Callista?" exclaimed Sylvane, his boyish face glowing. "Oh, Lance--she ain't said yes, has she?" [86] "No, Buddy," Lance flung over his shoulder, and you saw by his smile the strong affection there was between them, "she ain't said yes--but I have. I've set the time for Wednesday, and the Gentry place is all uptore right now getting ready for it. I reckon"--his eye gleamed with the mischievous afterthought--"I reckon they'll clear the big barn for dancing." As though the word had been a catch released in her mechanism, Roxy Griever straightened up, spoon in hand, with a snort. "You Lance Cleaverage--you sinful soul!" she began, pointing her bean spoon at him and thus shedding delightful dribblings of the stew which Mary Ann Martha instantly scraped up, "you air a-gettin' the best girl in the two Turkey Tracks--and here you take the name of dancin' on yo' sinful lips at the same time!" "I reckon you'll not come if there's goin' to be dancin'," remarked Lance, hanging up his hat and seating himself at the table. "I hadn't thought of that. Well--we'll have to get along without you." Roxy snorted inarticulate reprobation. Suddenly she demanded. "Sylvane, whar's that branch of leaves I sent you after?" With the words, Mary Ann Martha, unnoticed by her mother, abruptly dropped her shingle spoon, scrambled across Sylvane's long legs, and [87] galloped wildly out into the bit of orchard beside the house, her mass of almost white curling hair flying comically about her bobbing head, a picture of energetic terror. Her young uncle looked after her, smiling tolerantly, and said nothing.