e said, looking wistfully into
his face.

Involuntarily his hand went to his lip.

"I could try," he said.

"I can't bear to see you look so terribly young; you get worse and worse
every time I see you," she scolded plaintively. "I want you to be a
regular man right quick."

He wondered what he ought to say and presently stammered: "I--I--intend
to. I guess I'm more of a man than anybody would think to look at me."

"You're too young to ever fall in love I reckon."

"No I'm not," he answered with decision.

"Have you got a razor?" she asked.

"No."

"I reckon it would be a powerful help. You put soap on your lip and mow
it off with a razor. My father says it makes the grass grow."

There was a moment of silence during which she brushed the mane of her
pony. Then she asked timidly: "Do you play on the flute?"

"No, why?"

"I think it would break my heart. My Uncle Henry plays all day and it
makes him look crazy. Do you like yellow hair?"

"Yes, if it looks like yours."

"If you don't mind I'll put a mustache on you just--just to look at every
time I think of you."

"When I think of you I put violets in your hair," he said.

He took a step toward her as he spoke and as he did so she started her
pony. A little way off she checked him and said:

"I'm sorry. There are no violets now."

She rode away slowly waving her hand and singing with the joy of a bird
in the springtime:

"My sweetheart, come along
Don't you hear the glad song
As the notes of the nightingale flow?
Don't you hear the fond tale
Of the sweet nightingale
As she sings in the valleys below--
As she sings in the valleys below?"

He stood looking and listening. The song came to him as clear and sweet
as the notes of a vesper bell wandering in miles of silence.

When it had ceased he felt his lip and said: "How slow the time passes!
I'm going to get some shaving soap and a razor."

That evening when Harry was helping Samson with the horses he said:

"I'm going to tell you a secret. I wish you wouldn't say anything about
it."

Samson stood pulling the hair out of his card and looking very stern as
he listened while Harry told of the assault upon him and how Bim had
arrived and driven the rowdies away with her gun but he said not a word
of her demonstration of tender sympathy. To him that had clothed the
whole adventure with a kind of sanctity so that he could not bear to have
it talked about.

Samson's eyes