ller's neck and never could be shook
off till he was made drunk. Welborne never touches a drop, you know, and
so he'll stick till death claims him. I'm in an awful mess. I work like
a slave from break of day till away after dark, and never seem to move a
peg toward any sort of landing-place."

"You really ought to marry," Henley said. "That's exactly what you ought
to do. There's many a good man in the world that is actually suffering
for the need of the right sort of a helpmeet."

"You hit the nail on the head that whack," she said, quite seriously. "I
know I'm better-looking now--when I'm fixed up, at least--than I will be
ten years later; and I've got sense enough to know that old maids don't
make natural-looking brides. No, I really ought to give the subject more
thought. I ain't acting in a businesslike way about it. I ought to put
myself on the market, but I let first one thing and then another
interfere, and now it seems to be little Joe. I think I've got a sort of
mother-love for him, Alfred. He works over in his field, and me in mine,
and when it's twelve o'clock I get out my dinner-bucket and call to him,
and we both go down to the spring and have a picnic. That's where I
learn him to read. If old Pitman was to get on to it I reckon he'd raise
a row. Joe fetches his pore little scraps of streak-o'-lean,
streak-o'-fat bacon an' hoe-cake along, but I make 'im throw the stuff
away. I don't know, but I believe I'd rather see that child's big,
hungry eyes as I open that bucket than to be admired by the handsomest
young man in the county. I don't know, though--I've never tried the
young-man part."

"Yes, you ought to marry, Dixie." Henley, with the true feeling of a
gentleman that he ought not to sit while she stood, got out of his buggy
and leaned on the fence. "I'm going to confess that I've thought a lot
about that very thing since I got home, and, if I'm the judge I think I
am, I believe I've run across the very man for you."

"You don't say!" Dixie cried, eagerly. "Well, well!"

"You know I drive over to Carlton every now and then," Henley went on,
"and as Jim always has a few pounds of butter, a box or so of eggs, and
the like, to send, I take 'em to a store run by a young feller that I
always did like. Jasper Long is his name. He got his start by the
hardest licks that was ever dealt by a poor boy. He was a half-orphan,
and had to take care of his old mother till she died and left him all
alone. He drove