Billy observed the twelve pages
being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. "Honey
Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls," he remarked. "He says
you couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey
says Lin ain't worked it like he done in old times."

"Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right," said Jessamine, buoyantly.
"And that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till
it clears, and then we'll go for our ride."

"Yes," said Billy. "When does a man get too old to marry?"

"I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know."

"Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess
he must be thirty."

"Old!" exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her
table.

"But Lin ain't been married very much," pursued Billy. "Mother's the
only one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?"

"It's better to," said Jessamine.

"Ah, I don't think so," said Billy, with disparagement. "You ought to
see mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,"
said the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. "Why won't you
if he don't mind?"

She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for
eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph
called her to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to
inquiries about the cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour
teaching him to read various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was
refreshingly silent. But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was
still bad. Four o'clock found them much where they had been at eight.

"Please tell me why you won't leave Lin marry you." He was at the
window, kicking the wall.

"That's nine times since dinner," she replied, with tireless good humor.
"Now if you ask me twelve--"

"You'll tell?" said the boy, swiftly.

She broke into a laugh. "No. I'll go riding and you'll stay at home.
When I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me
three times."

"I've got two more, anyway. Ha-ha!"

"Better save 'em up, though."

"What did they do to you? Ah, I don't want to go a-riding. It's nasty
all over." He stared out at the day against which Separ's doors had been
tight closed since morning. Eight hours of furious wind had raised the
dust like a sea. "I wish the old train would come," observed Billy,
continuing to kick the wall. "I wish I was going somewhere