ays wanted to know what a man would say about me behind my back. I
know what women will say, for they will tell you to your teeth exactly
what they will behind your back, only worse, if they can possibly do it.
Try to remember exactly what you said."

Henley's blood burned fiercely in his tanned face. "I couldn't tell you
like I did him, and I hain't going to try. I ain't made that way--some
men are, but I ain't."

"You are afraid I'll feel bad about it, I see," the girl said, with
well-assumed severity, and she glanced aside that he might not read the
look of conscious power in her eyes. "You and me have been such stanch
friends that you hate to tell me what a poor opinion you have of me and
my looks. I see. I see. Well, I hain't got no right to think anybody
would think well of me--you least of all."

"Shucks! If you'd heard me you'd never complain," Henley burst forth. "I
told him you was the prettiest thing that ever wore shoe-leather; that
you had hair of a reddish-brownish mixture that no man could begin to
describe, and eyes so big and deep and drawing-like that a feller
couldn't look in 'em without wondering what they was made of, and cheeks
and lips as red and ripe and laughing as--"

"That will do," Dixie laughed, pleasurably. "You was determined to trade
me off, and you went at it like I was a horse you was trying to get rid
of for more than he was worth. Well, what else did you say?"

"Why, I told 'im about your awful struggle against adversity; about the
hold old Welborne had on you; about your mother and aunt being helpless
on your hands, and about how you wanted to add to it all by helping
Pitman's bound boy. But when I told him the other day about the way you
bought and sold that lion's cage I thought he would bust wide open. He
throwed himself back agin the counter and yelled and clapped his hands.
Said he:

"'Alf, that's the woman for me. Every trading man, needs a partner like
her. Such women as her are the mothers of kings and presidents and great
geniuses. _My_ mother was that way; she made me what I am.' And then he
railed out against conditions that could make you undergo so much
hardship, and said he'd just love to give a girl like you a good home
that you could keep neat and clean and in apple-pie order. He said his
life was lonely, and that he wanted to see a smiling face at the window
when he got home after work. He says he's able to build as good a house
as any man in Carlton, and that