"I never fixed as nice a one as that for you before," I said, with pride, as he drew on his silk sock with its huge hole over as neat a bandage as it was possible for human hands to accomplish. "I love to tie you up, Sam."
"Thank you, and I return the compliment," answered Sam, both smouldering and smiling down at me as if he were saying something to tease me. "And now as a reward for your kindness I am going to knock you down with some news." And as he spoke we went on out to the porch, Sam walking like a new man.
"Oh, the 'worse' thing! I had forgotten about that. Tell me, Sam," I answered, as I leaned against one of the pillars of the porch and he seated himself on the railing beside me.
"Well," said Sam, slowly, "this is not worse for you, just for me; that is, at the present speaking, with nothing but the hay-loft handy. I don't know just how I'll manage."
"What?"
"Pete," answered Sam.
"What about Peter? Oh, Sam, Peter isn't ill, is he?" And I reached out and clutched Sam's arm frantically. It takes alarm to test the depths of one's affection for a friend. I found mine for Peter deeper than I knew. If anything had happened, Sam would know it first. "Don't be cruel to me, Sam." And I shook his arm.
"Forgive me, Betty," said Sam, quickly. "Pete's all right and he'll be here to demonstrate it to you just as soon as I can get a stall built for him out at The Briers."
"At The Briers? Peter?" I gasped.
"Even at that humble abode, Betty, whose latch-string is always out to friends," answered Sam. And I felt his arm stiffen under my fingers in a way for which I could see no reason.
"Just as I was going to begin my garden," I wailed. And Sam's stiff arm limbered again and made a motion toward my hair that I dodged. "What does he want?"
"Direct life. I can give it to him," answered Sam. "At least that is what he asked for in his letter to me. I don't know what he will request in the one I wager you get by the morning mail."
"Why, I had been writing him all that he needed of that, and we are going to be so busy gardening, how can we help him live it also? Peter does require so much affectionate attention." I positively wailed this to Sam, in the most ungenerous spirit.
"Betty dear," said Sam, gently, as he puffed at a little brier which he had substituted for the adorable cob on account of the formality of Sue's dance, which we could hear going on comfortably without us, beyond the privet hedge whose buds were just beginning to give forth a delicious tang, "Peter is a great, queer kind of sensitive plant that it may be we will have to help cultivate. You know that for several years his poems have really got across in great style with the writing world, and I'm proud of him and--I--I--well, I love him. Suppose, just suppose, dear, that Keats had had a great hulking farmer like me to stand by. Don't you think that maybe the world would have had some grown-man stuff from him that would have counted? I always have thought of that when I looked at old Pete and promised myself to back him up with my brawn and nerve when he needed it. Why, in the '13 game it was Pete's flaming face up on the corner of the stadium that put the ginger in me to carry across as I did. Yes, I am going to put Pete's hand to my plow and his legs under old Buttercup at milking-time if it kills us both, if that is what he needs or you have made him think he needs."