PART IX.
THE SOCIABLE AT DUDLEY'S: DANCING THE "WEEVILY WHEAT." "Good night, Lettie!" "Goodnight, Ben!" (The moon is sinking at the west.) "Good night, my sweetheart." Once again The parting kiss, while comrades wait Impatient at the roadside gate, And the red moon sinks beyond the west.
THE SOCIABLE AT DUDLEY'S.
I.
John Jennings was not one of those men who go to a donation party with fifty cents' worth of potatoes and eat and carry away two dollars' worth of turkey and jelly-cake.

When he drove his team around to the front door for Mrs.Jennings, he had a sack of flour and a quarter of a fine fat beef in his sleigh and a five-dollar bill in his pocket-book, a contribution to Elder Wheat's support.
Milton, his twenty-year-old son, was just driving out of the yard, seated in a fine new cutter, drawn by a magnificent gray four-year-old colt.

He drew up as Mr.Jennings spoke.
"Now be sure and don't never leave him a minute untied.

And see that the harness is all right.

Do you hear, Milton ?" "Yes, I hear!" answered the young fellow, rather impatiently, for he thought himself old enough and big enough to look out for himself.
"Don't race, will y', Milton ?" was his mother's anxious question from the depth of her shawls.
"Not if I can help it," was his equivocal response as he chirruped to Marc Antony.