himself beside
her to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold
her.

Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still
further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look
so winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird
overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely
doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does
not prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.
Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man
and woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his
watch and counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she
smiled to herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing
swiftly at me and my well-assumed slumber.

And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot
sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.

"I know this road," piped Billy, on the box

"'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take
a left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains."

So I inquired what game he had then shot.

"Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know.
What made Lin marry mother when father was around?"

The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I
instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld
that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met
her on Bear Creek.

The formidable nine-year-old pondered. "The geography says they used to
have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman
can have a lot of husbands?"

"It don't especially depend on the place," remarked the driver to me.

"Because," Billy went on, "Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd
had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and
I blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too,
only Miss Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert
wouldn't, and Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he
come round, and I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and
he licked Bert! Say, am I Lin's, honest?"

"No, Billy, you're not," I said.

"Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother!
I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go.
You ain't married, are you?