has a beau or gets a thing to wear without trotting over to tell
me about it or flaunt it in my face. She even makes fun of me for having
to work in the field, and is actually insulting sometimes. I'd shut the
door in her face, but it would only please her to think she'd made me
mad."

"She's more anxious to get attention from men than any woman I ever laid
eyes on," Henley declared, resentfully. "When drummers come to sell me
goods, she scents 'em a mile down the road, and is in the store
pretending to want to buy some knickknack or other before they open
their samples. I oughtn't to talk agin a lady, Dixie, but she lays
herself open to it, and is so much like a man in some things that I
forget what's due her as a woman. She has such a sneering way, too. That
reminds me. I heard her mention my name when I passed you and her at the
spring the other day. I couldn't hear what she said, but from the way
she snickered I knew she was poking fun. I caught this much: she said
that I was the only man on earth who was fool enough to do something or
other. I couldn't hear what it was, and I didn't care much, but--"
Henley broke off, and for a moment his eyes rested on the averted face
of his companion.

"I don't carry tales," Dixie finally said, with a touch of
embarrassment, "but I've a good mind to tell you exactly what she said,
Alfred, so that you won't think it is worse than it really was. It
wasn't such an awful thing, and she was laughing more at her own
smartness than at you. She said--she said you was the only man under the
sun who had gone so far as to adopt a step-father-in-law. Now, that
wasn't so terrible, was it?"

A sickly smile struggled for existence on the face of the storekeeper,
and his color rose. "Well, that was a new way to put it, anyway," he
said. "I think I could laugh hearty at that joke if it was on some other
fellow, and I'm glad you told me what it was. I didn't know but what she
was saying something even nastier than that."

"She really said some _nice_ things," Dixie went on, diplomatically.
"She said it was good of you to give a home to the Wrinkles, and--"

"As I said just now, I won't take credit for that," Henley broke in; "in
fact, I'd have refused if I could have done it. It come as a surprise,
and it almost knocked me silly. I'd counted on Hettie doing a good many
odd things, but I never expected that. So when she come home from the
camp-meeting, where there had been such a big religiou