swered. "I saw her here,
and come over to see what was wrong. The little fellow don't look overly
stout."

"Nothing's the matter with 'im," Pitman retorted, visibly angered by
what he regarded as the interference of outsiders in his private
affairs.

"Well, I know he fainted," Dixie said, calmly, "but we won't argue about
it. I'll tell you one thing, though, Sam Pitman, if this thing goes
on--I say, if Joe is overworked like this any more--a single other
time--and it comes to my knowledge, I'll take you smack-dab to court. I
don't meddle in things that don't concern me, as a general thing, but
I'll take this in hand and I'll clutch it tight."

"You'll do wonders," Pitman sneered, but with a guarded glance at
Henley, who had, on one occasion, knocked him down in some dispute over
a debt at the store. He turned to the boy and took the hoe from him.
"You go drive up that cow. I'll finish this patch myself, and don't you
dare come back and say you can't find her, nuther. If you know what's
good for you, you fetch 'er home."

Leaving Pitman at work in the corn, and with the boy trudging homeward,
Henley and Dixie made their way out to the road. At the fence he threw
down several rails and aided her to step over the remaining ones. When
he had put the rails back in their places and joined her he was struck
by the altered expression of her face.

"I've wanted to see you all day," she began, her grave glance on the
ground, "and it looks like this meeting is providential. I want to get
it all plumb out, Alfred, and have it off my mind. I don't know when a
thing has bothered me so much. It seemed like such a little thing at the
time, but a whopping big one now. You 'n me have been too good friends,
Alfred, to let deception of any sort whatever come between us. Please
don't look at me so straight; I'll never get through it if you do. You
think I'm as good as the general run of girls, I'll be bound, and yet I
ain't."

"I'll take the risk on that," he laughed, incredulously. "I know what
you are--you are true blue. You've just showed the stripe you're made
of. In a minute you'd have fought that skunk back there like a mad
wildcat. For the time, at least, you was loving that pore boy as if he
was your own."

"We are not talking about that--that's nothing," she said. "No woman
that is half a one could see the dreamy blue eyes of that lonely boy,
and know what he's going through, and not want to hug 'im up to her
breast and p