The twins, deprecating the spinster’s wrath, wisely made him no reply, but little Eva flew to his side and, clasping her soft arms about his neck, cried, with her rosy cheek pressed against his dear, white head: “Dear old gran’ther, please make her let me go on the hay ride if I can persuade Dan to stay with you.” “Sartain, sartain, child,” the old man answered soothingly. Dan was the chore boy, a stout, stupid fellow, fond in his way of little Eva, but he had his own plans to go out with the boys on Hallowe’en larks to-night, so he resisted all the little beauty’s blandishments, and would neither be coaxed nor bribed to stay. Then Gran’ther Groves, pained at his darling’s disappointment, valiantly announced he would stay alone. Pooh! what was he afraid of, he who had shouldered a musket four long years in the Civil War and marched with Sherman through Georgia. But, alas, that wound he had got in the last battle had impaired his health for life. He was never able to till the soil any more, and he had never been left alone again since the day he had fallen with his face in the creek in a dreadful fit and been saved by a passing fisherman, who dragged him out just in the nick of time. The old doctor had said the fit resulted from his wound, and that he must never be suffered to go about alone, lest he should come to grief. For a while Terry had been his companion, but he was gone away to the university, at Morgantown, to study law, so the duty fell by common consent on Eva. At his cheerful little speech she hushed her sobs and exclaimed tenderly: “Say no more about it, for I will never leave you alone, gran’ther, dear.” “Then quit your fooling and pack the lunch basket for us,” interpolated Patty, who was sewing a new red ribbon into the neck of her waist. “Yes, do,” added Lydia lazily, from her rocking-chair and novel. “I won’t, so there!” declared Eva pettishly. “You may wait on yourselves, Pat and Lyd, since you like so well to leave me at home like a poor little ashcat, and go off and have all the fun yourselves. I won’t even help Dan to milk Spots and Dapple! I’m going to sit down and rest and read my love letter over again!” throwing herself into a chair and drawing a large, square, white envelope from her apron pocket and unfolding a closely written sheet, which she began to read with demure interest. “A letter? Where on airth would that child get a letter?” demanded the spinster, while the twins faced about with equal wonder. A letter! Why, little Eva had never received a letter in her life, they were sure. Yet there she sat, demurely rustling the large, satiny white sheets of paper, while its delicate scent of violets exhaled into the room above the kitchen odors of pumpkin pie, caramel cake, and the homely white loaf of salt-risen bread dear to the West Virginian’s heart--the bread his mother made.