xt7sqv3c0820 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7sqv3c0820/data/mets.xml Daviess, Maria Thompson, 1872-1924. 1915  books b92-209-30909643 English Harper, : New York ; London : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Over Paradise ridge  : a romance / by Maria Thompson Daviess. text Over Paradise ridge  : a romance / by Maria Thompson Daviess. 1915 2002 true xt7sqv3c0820 section xt7sqv3c0820 
































































                             [See page 122
'I GOT A CALL-A LAND CALL THAT I HAD TO
               A-NSWER "

 



          OVER


PARADISE RIDGE

          A ROMANCE


              BY



MARIA
  "THE



THOMPSON DAVIESS
  AUTHOR OF
MELTING OF MOLLY" ETC.



ILLUSTRATED



HARPER  BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
   NEW YORK AND LONDON

 










































































        OVER PARADISE RIDGE

Copyright, 1915, by Harper  Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
        Publihed October, qij5

                 K-P

 





























           TO
BERNICE LANIER DICKINSON

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               CONTENTS

CHAP.                                       PAGE
I. THE BOOK OF FOOD.. . . . .  . . . . .  .    I

II. THE BooK OF SHELTER.. . . . . .   .      50
III. THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER.. . . . . . . . .  90

IV. THE BOOK OF LOVE. . . . . . . . . . . . 126

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            ILLUSTRATIONS

"I GOT A CALL-A LAND CALL THAT I HAD TO
   ANSWER   . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . Fronisipiece
TmE BYRD WAS ATTIRED IN MINIATURES OF SAM'S
   OVERALLS . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . Facing p. 66

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OVER PARADISE



RIDGE

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OVER PARADISE RIDGE


                      I

              THE BOOK OF FOOD

NOBODY knows what starts the sap along the
    twigs of a very young, tender, and green
woman's nature. In my case it was Samuel Foster
Crittenden, though how could he have counted on
the amount of Grandmother Nelson that was planted
deep in my disposition, ready to spring up and bear
fruit as soon as I was brought in direct acquaintance
with a seed-basket and a garden hoe Also why
should Sam's return to a primitive state have forced
my ancestry up to the point of flowering on the sur-
face I do hope Sam will not have to suffer conse-
quences, but I can't help it if he does. What's born
in us is not our fault.
  "Yes, Betty, I know I'm an awful shock to you as
a farmer. I ought to have impressed it on you more
thoroughly before you-you saw me in the act. I'm
sorry, dear," Sam comforted me gently and tenderly
                      I

 


      OVER PARADISE RIDGE
as I wept with dismay into the sleeve of his faded
blue overalls.
  "I can't understand it," I sniffed as I held on to
his sustaining hand while I balanced with him on the
top of an old, moss-covered stone wall he had begged
me to climb to for a view of Harpeth Valley which he
thought might turn my attention from him. "Have
you mislaid your beautiful ambitions anywhere"
  "I must have planted them along with my corn
crop, I reckon," he answered, quietly, as he steadied
his shoulder against an old oak-tree that grew close
to the fence and then steadied my shoulder against
his.
  "It is just for a little while, to get evidence about
mud and animals and things like that, isn't it" I
asked, with great and undue eagerness, while an
early blue jay flitted across from tree-top to tree-top
in so happy a spirit that I sympathized with the
admiring lady twit that came from a bush near the
wall. "You are going back out into the world where
I left you, aren't you"
  "No," answered Sam, in an even tone of voice that
quieted me completely; it was the same he had
used when he made me stand still the time his fish-
hook caught in my arm at about our respective sixth
and tenth years. " No, I'm going to be just a
farmer. It's this way, Betty. That valley you are
looking down into has the strength to feed hundreds
of thousands of hungry men, women, and children
when they come down to us over Paradise Ridge from
the crowded old world; but men have to make her
                       2

 


THE BOOK OF FOOD



give it up and be ready for them. At first I wasn't
sure I could, but now I'm going to put enough heart
and brain and muscle into my couple of hundred
acres to dig out my share of food, and that of the
other folks a great strapping thing like I am ought
to help to feed. I'll plow your name deep into the
potato-field, dear," he ended, with a laugh, as he let
go my hand, which he had almost dislocated while
his eyes smoldered out over the Harpeth Valley,
lying below us like an earthen cup full of green
richness, on whose surface floated a cream of mist.
  "It just breaks my heart to see you away from
everything and everybody, all burned up and
scratched up and muddy, and-and-" I was saying
as he lifted me back into the road again beside my
shiny new Redwheels that looked like an enlarged
and very gay sedan-chair.
  "Look, look, Betty!" Sam interrupted my distress
over his farmer aspect, which was about to become
tearful, and his eyes stopped regarding me with sad
seriousness and lit with affectionate excitement as
he peered into the bushes on the side of the road.
"There's my lost heifer calf! You run your car on
up to my house beyond the bend there and I'll drive
her back through the woods to meet you. Get out
and head her off if she tries to pass you." With
which command he was gone just as I was about to
begin to do determined battle for his rescue.
  I did not run my car up to his farm-house. I
"negotiated a turn" just as the man I bought it
from in New York had taught me to do; only he
                       3

 


      OVER PARADISE RIDGE
hadn't counted on a rail fence on one side, a rock wall
just fifty feet across from it, and two stumps besides.
It was almost like a maxixe, but I finally got headed
toward Providence Road, down which, five miles
away, Hayesboro is firmly planted in a beautiful,
dreamy, vine-covered rustication.
  "Oh, I wonder if it could be a devil that is possess-
ing Sam" I asked myself, stemming with my tongue
a large tear that was taking a meandering course down
my cheek because I was afraid to take either hand off
the steering-gear for fear I would run into a slow, old
farm horse, with a bronzed overalled driver and
wagon piled high with all sorts of uninteresting
crates and bales and unspeakable pigs and chickens.
As I skidded past them I told myself I had more
than a right to weep over Sam when I thought of the
last time I had seen him before this distressing in-
terview; the contrast was enough to cause grief.
  It had happened the night after Sam's graduation
in June and just the night before I had sailed with
Mabel Vandyne and Miss Greenough for a wander-
year in Europe. Sam was perfectly wonderful to
look at with his team ribbon in the buttonhole of his
dress-coat, and I was very proud of him. We were
all having dinner at the Ritz with two of Sam's class-
mates and the father of one, Judge Vandyne, who
is one of the greatest corporation lawyers in New
York. He had just offered Sam a chance in his
offices, together with his own son.
  "You'll buck right on up through center just as
you do on the gridiron, old man, to the Supreme
                       4

 


THE BOOK OF FOOD



bench before you are forty. I'm glad the governor
will have you, for I'll never make it. Oh, you Sam-
boy!" said Peter Vandyne, who was their class poet
and who adored Sam from every angle from each
of which Sam reciprocated.
  And all the rest raised their glasses and said:
  " Oh, Samboy!"
  The waiters even knew who Sam was on account
of the last Thanksgiving game, and beamed on him
with the greatest awe and admiration. And I
beamed with the rest, perhaps even more proudly.
Still, that twinkle in Sam's hazel eyes ought to have
made me uneasy even then. I had seen it often
enough when Sam had made up his mind to things
he was not talking about.
  "The ladies and all of us," answered Sam to Peter's
toast, as he raised his glass and set it down still full,
then grinned at me as he said, so low that the others
couldn't hear, "Will you meet me in Hayesboro after
a year and a day, Betty"
  I don't see why I didn't understand and begin to
defend Sam from himself right then instead of going
carelessly and lightheartedly to Europe and letting
him manage his own affairs. I didn't even write to
him, except when I saw anything that interested or
moved me, and then I just scribbled "remind me to
tell you about this" on a post-card and sent it to
him. You can seal some friends up in your heart
and forget about them, and when you take them out
they are perfectly fresh and good, but they may
have changed flavor. That is what Sam did, and



2



5

 


OVER PARADISE RIDGE



I am not surprised that the rural flavor of what he
offered me out there in dirt lane shocked me slightly.
I didn't think then that I liked it and I also felt that
I wished I had stayed by Sam at that wobbling
period of his career; but, on the other hand, it was
plainly my duty to go to Europe with Mabel and
Peter Vandyne and Miss Greenough. The inclina-
tion to do two things at once is a sword that slices
you in two, as the man in the Bible wanted to do
to the baby to make enough of him for the two
mothers; and that is the way I felt about Peter and
Sam as I whirled along the road. I am afraid Sam
is going to be the hardest to manage. He is harder
than Peter by nature. If Sam had just taken to
drink instead of farming I would have known better
what to do. I reformed Peter in one night in
Naples when he took too much of that queer Italian
wine merely because it was his birthday. I used
tears, and he said it should never happen again. I
don't believe it has, or he wouldn't have got an
act and a half of his "Epic of American Life" finished
as he told me he had done when I dined with him in
New York the night I landed. I missed Peter
dreadfully when he left us in London in June, and
so did Miss Greenough and Mabel, though she is his
sister. We all felt that if he had been with us it
wouldn't have taken us all these months of that
dreadful war to get comfortably home. Peter said
at the dock that he hadn't drawn a full breath since
war had been declared until he got my feet off the
gang-plank on to American soil. He needn't have
                       6

 


THE BOOK OF FOOD



worried quite as much as that, for we had a lovely,
exciting time visiting at the Gregorys' up in Scotland
while waiting for state-rooms. And it was while
hearing all those Scotchmen and Englishmen talk
about statesmanship and jurisprudence and inter-
national law that I realized how America would
need great brains later on, more and more, as she
would have to arbitrate, maybe, for the whole world.
  I smiled inwardly as I listened, for didn't I know
that in just a few years the nation would have Samuel
Foster Crittenden to rely on Sam is a statesman
by inheritance, for he has all sorts of remarkable
Tennessee ancestry back of him from Colonial times
down to his father's father, who was one of the great
generals of our own Civil War. And as I listened
to those splendid men talk about military matters,
just as Judge Crittenden had talked to Sam and me
about his father, the general, ever since we were big
enough to sit up and hear about it, and discuss what
American brains and character could be depended
upon to do, I glowed with pride and confidence in
Sam. I'm glad I didn't know then about the col-
lapsed structure of my hopes for him that Sam was
even then secretly unsettling. At the thought my
hand trembled on the wheel and I turned my car
hastily away from two chickens and a dog in the
road and my mind from the anxiety of Sam to
further pleasant thoughts of Peter.
  I don't believe Judge Vandyne's thoughts of Peter
are as pleasant as mine, for Peter doesn't go to the
office at all any more; he spends his waking moments
                        7

 


OVER PARADISE RIDGE



at a club where players and play-writers and all men
play a great deal of the time. I forget its name, but
it makes the judge mad to mention it.
  "The dear old governor's mind is gold-bound,"
said Peter, sadly, after we came away from luncheon
with the judge down in Wall Street. "Why should
I grub filthy money when he has extracted the bulk
of it that he has I must go forward and he must
realize that he should urge me on up. I ought not to
be tied down to unimportant material things. I
must not be. You of all people understand me and
my ambitions, Betty." As he said it he leaned
toward me across the tea-table at the Astor, where
we had dropped exhaustedly down to finish the dis-
cussion on life which the judge's practical tirade had
evoked.
  "But then, Peter, you know it was a very great
thing Judge Vandyne showed his bank how to do
about that international war loan. In England and
Scotland they speak of him with bated breath. It
was so brilliant that it saved awful complications
for Belgium."
  "Oh, he's the greatest ever-in all material ways,"
answered Peter, with hasty loyalty and some pride,
"but I was speaking of those higher things, Betty, of
the spirit. The things over which your soul and
mine seem to draw near to each other. Betty, the
second act of 'The Emergence' is almost finished,
and Farrington is going to read it himself when I
have it ready. He told me so at the club just yes-
terday. You know he awarded my junior prize for
                       8

 



THE BOOK OF FOOD



the 'Idyl.' Think of it-Farrington!" And Peter
leaned forward and took my hand.
  "Oh, Peter, I am so glad!" I said, with a catch
of joy in my breath, but I drew away my hand. I
knew I liked Peter in many wonderful ways, but
in some others I was doubtful. I had only known
Peter the three years I've been away from Hayesboro,
being finished in the North, and even if I did room
with his sister at the Manor on the Hudson and
travel with her a year, it is not the same as being
born next door to him, as in the case of Sam, for
instance. But then I ought not to compare Peter
and Sam. Peter is of so much finer clay than Sam.
Just thinking about clay made me remember those
unspeakable boots of Sam's I had encountered out
on the road, and again I determinedly turned my
thoughts back to that wonderful afternoon with
Peter at the Astor a few short days ago. Miss
Greenough kept telling Mabel and me all over
Europe to look at everything as material to build
nests of pleasant thoughts for our souls to rest
in, as Ruskin directed in the book she had. I've
made one that will last me for life of Peter, who is
the most beautiful man in the whole wide world;
also of the yellow shade on the Astor lamp, the
fountain, and the best chicken sandwich I ever ate.
It will be a warmer place to plump down in than
most of the picture-galleries and cathedrals I had
used for nest-construction purposes at Miss Green-
ough's direction.
  Yes, I drew my hand away from Peter's, but a
                       9

 


       OVER PARADISE RIDGE
little thing like that would never stop a poet; and
before the waiter had quite swept us out with the
rest of the tea paraphernalia to make way for that
of dinner he had made me see that I was positively
necessary to his career, especially as both his father
and Mabel are so unsympathetic. It is a great
happiness to a woman to feel necessary to a man,
though she may not enjoy it entirely.
  "Oh, I know I can write it all-all that is in my
heart if I feel that it is-is for you, dearest dear
Betty," was the last thing that Peter said as he
put me on a train headed for the Harpeth Valley
that night.
  I didn't answer-I don't know that I ever did
answer Peter anything, but he never noticed that
when he thought of how my loving him would
help out with the play.
  Just here I was musing so deeply on the in-
tricacies of love that I nearly ran over a nice, moth-
erly old cow that had come to the middle of the road
with perfectly good faith in me when she saw me
coming. And as I rounded her off well to the left
again my thoughts skidded back to Sam and the
way he had treated me as less than a heifer calf
after I had not seen him for a year, and she had
just seen him that morning at feeding-time.
  "Head off that saucy young cow, indeed!" I
sniffed, as I ran the car into the side yard between
my home and the old Crittenden house.
  "I wonder if he really expected me to be waiting
there in that lane for him" I questioned myself.
                       IO

 



THE BOOK OF FOOD



And the answer I got from the six-year-old girl
that is buried alive in me was that Sam did expect
me to do as he told me, and that something serious
might happen if I didn't. As I turned Redwheels
over to old Eph, who adores it because it is the only
one he ever had his hands on, I felt a queer sinking
somewhere in the heart of that same young self.
I always had helped Sam-and suppose that un-
speakable animal had got lost to him for ever just
because I hadn't done as he told me! I reached out
my hand for the runabout to start right back;
then I realized it was too late. The night had
erected a lovely spangled purple tent of twilight
over Hayesboro, and the all-evening performances
were about to begin.
  Lovely women were lighting lamps and drawing
shades or meeting the masculine population at
front gates with babies in their arms or beau-
catcher curls set on their cheeks with deadly intent.
Negro cooks were hustling suppers on their smoking
stoves, and one of the doves that lives up in the vines
under the eaves of my home moaned out and was
answered by one from under the vines that grow
over the gables at the Crittendens'. I haven't felt
as lonesome as all that since the first week of Sam's
freshman year at college. As I looked across the
lilac hedge, which was just beginning to show a green
sap tint along its gray branches, I seemed to see my
poor little blue-ginghamed, pigtailed self crouched
at Judge Crittenden's feet on the front steps, sobbing
my lonely heart away while he smoked his sorrow
                       II

 


OVER PARADISE RIDGE



down with a long brier pipe, and the Byrd chirped
his little three-year-old protest in concert with us
both. Most eighteen-year-old men would have re-
sented having a motherless little brother and a long-
legged girl neighbor eternally at their heels, but
Sam never had; or, if he did, he gently kicked the
Byrd and me out of the way, and we never knew
that was what he was doing. We even loved
him for the kicks. Then as the tears misted across
my eyes a woman with a baby in her arms came out
and called in two children who were playing under
the old willow-tree over by the side gate the willow
that had belonged to Sam and me-and my eyes
dried themselves with indignant astonishment.
  "Who are those people over at the Crittendens',
mother" I asked, in a stern voice, as I walked in
and interrupted mother counting the fifteenth row
on a lace mat she was making.
  "Why, the Burtons bought the place from Sam
after the judge's death. Don't you remember I
wrote you about it, Betty dear" she answered,
with the gentle placidity with which she has always
met all my tragic moments. Mother raised seven
boys before she produced me, and her capacity for
any sort of responsive excitement gave out long
before I needed it. After her sons a woman seems
to consider a daughter just a tame edition of a
child. Mother has calmly crocheted herself through
every soul-storm I have ever had, and she is the
most dear and irresponsible parent an executive
girl would wish to have leave her affairs alone. As
                       I2

 



THE BOOK OF FOOD



for daddy, he has always smiled and beckoned me
away from her into a corner and given me what I
was making a stand for. My father loves me with
such confidence that he pays no attention to me
whatever except when he thinks it is about time
for him to write my name on a check. His phosphate
deals have made him rich in an un-Hayesboro-like
way, and all the boys are in business for him in
different states, except the oldest one, who is Con-
gressman from this district, and one other who is
in a Chicago bank. Yes, I know I have the most
satisfactorily aloof family in the wide world. I
can just go on feeding on their love and depend
upon them not to interfere with any of my plans
for living life. However, if anything happens to
me I can be sure that their love will spring up and
growl.
  Now, when I stalked into the room and asked
about the Crittenden home, daddy reared his head
from his evening paper and immediately took no-
tice of whatever it was in my voice that sounded
as if something had hurt me.
  "Daddy," I asked him, with a little gulp, "did
Sam-Sam sell his ancestral home even to the third
and fourth generation and go to farming just for
sheer wickedness"
  "No, madam, he did not," he answered, looking
at me over his glasses, and I could see a pain
straighten out the corners of his mouth under his
fierce white mustache. "The judge's debts made
a mortgage that nicely blanketed the place, and
                       I3

 


OVER PARADISE RIDGE



Sam had only to turn it over to the creditors and
walk out to that little two-hundred-acre brier-
patch the judge had forgot to mortgage."
  "Then Sam can sell it for enough to go out and
take his place in the world," I said, with the greatest
relief in my voice.
  "He could, but he won't," answered daddy, look-
ing at me with keen sympathy. "I tried that out
on him. Just because that brier-patch has never
had a deed against it since the grant from Virginia
to old Samuel Foster Crittenden of I793 he thinks
it is his sacred duty to go out and dig a hole in a
hollow log for Byrd and himself and get in it to
sentimentalize and starve."
  "Oh, I think that is a beautiful thought about the
land, and I wish I had known it earlier! But could
they be really hungry-hungry, daddy" I said,
with a sudden vacant feeling just under my own ribs
in the region between my heart and my stomach.
  "Oh no," answered daddy, comfortably. "They
both looked fat enough the last time I saw Sam
coming to town in a wagon with Byrd, leading a re-
markably fine Jersey calf. We'll go out in that new
flying-machine you brought home with you and
pull them out of their burrow some day when you
get the time. Fine boy, that; and, mother, when is
that two-hundred-pound black beauty in your kit-
chen going to have supper"
  I didn't tell daddy I had gone to the ends of the
earth to hunt for Sam in less than thirty-six hours
after I had landed in Hayesboro, but I went up to
                       14

 



THE BOOK OF FOOD



my room to slip into something clean and springy,
walking behind a thin mist of tears of pure senti-
ment. That was the third time in about seven hours
I had been crying over Sam Crittenden, and then I
had to eat a supper of fried chicken and waffles
that would have been delicious if it hadn't been
flavored by restrained sobs in my throat. I was
so mad at my disloyal thoughts about a beautiful
character, which Sam's reverence for his ancestral
land proves his to be, and so afraid of what I had
done to him about the calf, and so hungry to see
him, that by the time the apple-float came on the
table I thought it would have to be fed to me by
old Eph. Mother made it worse by remarking, as
she put a lovely dab of thick cream right on top
of my saucer:
  "Did you hear, father, that all of Sam's cows had
been sick and that he has lost his two finest calves"
  I couldn't stand any more. I gulped the cream,
remarked huskily on how warm the April night was,
and escaped down the front walk to the old purple
lilac-bush by the gate where up to my seventh year
I had always kept house with and for Sam whenever
he would enter into the bonds of an imaginary
marriage with me for an hour or two. Sam made a
good father of a hollyhock doll family whenever
he undertook the relation, and provided liberally
for us all in the way of honey, locusts, and grass nuts.
  "And I, maybe, let him lose the last calf he has
when he is noble and poor and alone," I sobbed into
my silk sleeve, which was so thin that I shivered in
                       '5

 


OVER PARADISE RIDGE



the cool April moonlight as I leaned against the gate
and looked away out at the dim blue hills that rim
the Harpeth Valley, at the foot of one of which I
seemed to see Sam's and Byrd's hollow log.
  "Hello, Bettykin! Out putting our hollyhock
family to bed" laughed a crisp, comforting, jolly
voice right at my elbow as a big, rough hand ruffled
my beautifully smoothed hair and then gave a
friendly shake to my left shoulder. "How do you
find all our children after a three-year foreign
sojourn "
  "I told you five years ago, when I put it up on
my head, to stop ruffing my hair, Sam Crittenden;
and did you find that cow" I answered, with both
defiance and anxiety in my voice.
  "I did," answered Sam, cheerfully, "but how did
I lose you in the shuffle I tied her up in the shack
with a rope and then beat it in all these five miles,
partly by foot and partly by a neighbor's buggy, to
find and er-rope you in. I am glad to see you
are standing quietly at the bars waiting for me, and
as soon as I've greeted your mother and Dad Hayes
and got a little of the apple-float that I bet was the
fatted calf they killed for your prodigal return, I'll
foot it the five miles back in a relieved and con-
tented frame of mind."
  " How did you happen to let your cows get
sick, Sam" I demanded, sternly, instead of put-
ting my arms around his neck to tell him how
noble I had found out he was, and how glad I was
that he had come all that way to see me, and not
                       i6

 



THE BOOK OF FOOD



to be mad at me because I didn't obey him out
in the lane.
  "I don't know, Betty, I just don't know," an-
swered Sam, as he lit a corn-cob pipe and leaned
closer to me in a thoughtful manner. "Cows
are such feminine things and so contrary. I don't
know what I will do if I lose any more. I-I may
get discouraged."
  "Have you had a doctor" I asked, briskly and
unfeelingly, though I did take his big rough hand in
my own and hold on to it with a sympathy that
was not in my voice.
  "No, I've sorter doctored them by a book I have.
The only good veterinary doctor about here lives
way over by Spring Hill, and it would take him a
day to drive over and back, besides costing me about
ten dollars. Still, I ought to get him. Buttercup
is pretty sick," answered Sam, and I could see that
his broad shoulders under his well-cut blue serge
coat of last season seemed to sag with the weight
of his animal responsibilities.
  "I can take my car over to Spring Hill in less
than an hour, get the doctor, and have you and the
doctor out to those animals by ten. This moon
will last all night; and you go get the apple-
float from mother while I make Eph run out the
car and jump into my corduroys. Come on,
quick!" And as I talked I opened the gate, drew
him in, and started leading him up the front walk
by the sleeve of his coat.
  "Not if I know myself, Betty. will I let you
                       I 7

 


OVER PARADISE RIDGE



undertake such a red-cross expedition as that.
They'll have to wait. I came in to call on you and
whisper sweet nothings to you in the parlor while
you tell me-"
  "Eat the float in a hurry if you want it," I in-
terrupted him, as I deposited him beside mother,
who was still sipping a last cup of coffee with her
jelly-cake, and went for my room and my motor
clothes.
  And it was one grand dash that Redwheels and
I made out Providence Road and over Paradise
Ridge down to Spring Hill in less than thirty-five
minutes. In the moonlight the road was like a love-
ly silver ribbon that we wound up on a spool under
the machine, and a Southern spring breeze seemed to
be helping the gasoline to waft us on more rapidly
in our flight as it stung our faces with its coolness,
which was scented with the sap that was just begin-
ning to rise against bark and bud in the meadows
and woods past which we sped.
  "It will be great to die together, won't it, Betty"
said Sam once as Redwheels ran a few yards on two
wheels, then tried the opposite two before it settled
back to the prosaic though comfortable use of four
as we took a flying leap across a little creek ditch.
  "We can't die sentimentally; we've got to get
back to those suffering cows," I answered him,
firmly, as I whirled into Spring Hill and stopped
Redwheels, panting and hot, in front of the dry-
goods, feed, and drug store. There I knew we
could find out anything we wanted to know about
                       is

 



THE BOOK OF FOOD



the whereabouts or profession of any of the fifteen
hundred inhabitants of the little old hamlet which
has nestled under the hills for a hundred years or
more. "Ask where the cow physician lives. Quick!"
  And at my urge Sam sprang out and across the
old, uneven brick pavement that lay between us
and the store door. Then in less than two minutes
he appeared with a round, red-faced, white-headed
old man who wheezed chuckles as he talked.
  His fear of the car was only equaled by his
fascination at the idea of the long ride in it, which
would be the first motor-driven sortie he had ever
made out into life.
  "Air ye sure, little missie, that you can drive the
contraption so as not to run away with us Old
folks is tetchy, like a basket of pullet eggs," he said,
as Sam seated him in the back seat and sprang to
my side.
  "I wish I had a rope to tie him in," he muttered, as
he sank into his seat. "If you run as you did com-
ing, we'll sure lose him. He'll bounce like a butter-
ball. "
  "I'm not taking any risks," I answered, and it
was with greatest mildness that we sauntered up
Paradise Ridge and started down the other side.
And as I drove along carefully my mind began to
work out into the byways of the situation. I don't
see how my athletic and executive generation is
going to do its appointed work in its day if we are
going to go on using the same set of social con-
ventions that tied up our mothers. As we neared
                       I9

 


OVER PARADISE RIDGE



the cross-road that turned off to Sam's brier-patch I
began to wonder how long it would take me to rush
back into Hayesboro, bundle mother into Redwheels,
and get back to the cows. It was just a quarter
after nine o'clock, but I knew she would be sleepy
and would have to be forced to come with me very
gently and slowly. Still, I didn't see how I could
go on out into the woods with only Sam and the
Butterball which was wheezing out cow conversa-
tion to Sam that I was intensely interested in and
ought to have been listening to rather than wasting
force on foolish proprieties. I was about to turn
and take Sam's advice on the matter when he sud-
denly laid his fingers on my arm and said:
  "Stop a minute, Betty. What's that roosting on
that stone wall" And as he spoke he peered out
toward a strange, huge bird sitting by the side of the
road.
  I stopped just about opposite the object and
Sam sprang out.
  "You, Byrd Crittenden, where did you come
from" I heard Sam demand of the huddled bundle
as he lifted it off the wall. It was attired in scanty
night-drawers and a short coat, and shivered as it
stood, first on one foot and then on the other.
  " I ain't a-going to stay in no country with a
hoot-owl, Sam. I'm going to somewhere that a
lady lives at, too. " And the manful little voice
broke as the bunch shivered up against Sam's
legs.
  "Honest, Byrd, I thought you were asleep and
                       20

 



THE BOOK OF FOOD



wouldn't wake up till morning. You never did
before; but when I go-go gallivanting, have I got to
take you or not go" And Sam's voice was bravely
jocular.
  "Bring him here to me, Sam," I cried out, quickly.
"Come in here with Betty, Byrd." And I cuddled
his long, thin, little legs down under my lap-blanket
beyond the steering-gear. "You didn't forget Betty
while she was away, did you" I asked, as we
snuggled to each other and I started the motor,
while Dr. Chubb chuckled and Sam still stood in
the middle of the moonlit road as if uncertain what
to do next.
  "Yes, I forgot you," answered Byrd, candidly,
though I had adored him since his birth; "but
I like to go see Mother Hayes and eat jelly-cake.
Can I go home with you"
  " No. I'm going as fast as I can with you to your
home to keep you from freezing to death," I an-
swered, quickly adopting this recovered old friend
in the double capacity