on his "war-togs," by which he meant
his best clothes. He wouldn't blame her at all if she passed him up
for a stranger, just at first. A great deal more he thought on the
same subject, and quite as foolishly.

Because of much thinking on the subject, when he and Dill rode down
the trail which much recent passing had made unusually dusty, with the
hot sunlight of the Fourth making the air quiver palpably around them;
with the cloudless blue arching hotly over their heads and with the
four by six cotton flag flying an involuntary signal of distress--on
account of its being hastily raised bottom-side-up and left that
way--and beckoning them from the little clump of shade below, the
heart of Charming Billy Boyle beat unsteadily under the left pocket of
his soft, cream-colored silk shirt, and the cheeks of him glowed red
under the coppery tan. Dill was not the sort of man who loves fast
riding and they ambled along quite decorously--"like we was headed
for prayer-meeting with a singing-book under each elbow," thought
Billy, secretly resentful of the pace.

"I reckon there'll be quite a crowd," he remarked wistfully. "I see a
good many horses staked out already."

Dill nodded absently, and Billy took to singing his pet ditty; one
must do something when one is covering the last mile of a journey
toward a place full of all sorts of delightful possibilities--and
covering that mile at a shambling trot which is truly maddening.

"She can make a punkin pie quick's a cat can wink her eye,
She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother!"

"But, of course," observed Mr. Dill quite unexpectedly, "you know,
William, time will remedy that drawback."

Billy started, looked suspiciously at the other, grew rather red and
shut up like a clam. He did more; he put the spurs to his horse and
speedily hid himself in a dust-cloud, so that Dill, dutifully keeping
pace with him, made a rather spectacular arrival whether he would or
no.

Charming Billy, his hat carefully dimpled, his blue tie fastidiously
knotted and pierced with the Klondyke nugget-pin which was his only
ornament, wandered hastily through the assembled groups and
slapped viciously at mosquitoes. Twice he shied at a flutter of
woman-garments, retreated to a respectable distance and reconnoitred
with a fine air of indifference, to find that the flutter accompanied
the movements of some girl for whom he cared not at all.

In his nostrils was the indefinable, un