t."

Orson's mother was somewhat comforted when he wrote her that the young
women of Carthage were noisy rowdies dressed like frumps. She was a
trifle alarmed when she read in his next letter that some of them were
not half bad-looking, surprisingly well groomed for so far West, and
fairly attractive till they opened their mouths. Then, he said, they
twanged the banjo at every vowel and went over the letter "r" as if it
were a bump in the road. He had no desire for blinders, but he said that
he would derive comfort from a pair of ear-muffs. By and by he was
writing her not to be worried about losing him, for there was safety in
numbers, and Carthage was so crowded with such graces that he could
never single out one siren among so many. The word "siren" forced his
mother to conclude that even their voices had ceased to annoy him. She
expected him to bring home an Indian squaw or a cowgirl bride on any
train.

And so Orson Carver was by delicate degrees engulfed in the life of
Carthage. He was never assimilated. He kept his own "dialect," as they
called it.

The girl that Orson especially attended in Carthage was Tudie Litton,
as pretty a creature as he could imagine or desire. For manifest reasons
he affected an interest in her brother Arthur. And Arthur, with a
characteristic brotherly feeling, tried to keep his sister in her place.
He not only told her that she was "not such a much," but he also said to
Orson:

"You think my sister is some girl, but wait till you see Em Terriberry.
She makes Tudie look like something the pup found outside. Just you wait
till you see Em. She's been to boarding-school and made some swell
friends there, and they've taken her to Europe with 'em. Just you wait."

"I'll wait," said Orson, and proceeded to do so.

But Em remained out of town so long that he had begun to believe her a
myth, when one day the word passed down the line that she was coming
home at last.

That night Tudie murmured a hope that Orson would not be so infatuated
with the new-comer as to cast old "friends" aside. She underlined the
word "friends" with a long, slow sigh like a heavy pen-stroke, and not
without reason, for the word by itself was mild in view of the fact that
the "friends" were seated in a motionless hammock in a moon-sheltered
porch corner and holding on to each other as if a comet had struck the
earth and they were in grave danger of being flung off the planet.

Orson assured Tudie: "No woman e