"that always seems the main thing
in--in a deal o' this sort."

"Well," she chuckled, "I'm better at making rag-dolls than men, but if
men-making was my trade I think I could have turned out a better job
than Long. Folks say that to be wide betwixt the eyes shows sense. That
may be so up to certain limits, but I'm afraid his are entirely too far
apart. Why, when you set close to him you can't see both of 'em at the
same time; you have to look first at one and then at the other. I tried
to get around the trouble by looking at his nose, but that seemed to be
crooked and awful flat. I didn't like them long hairs on his hands; his
forefathers must have lived in a cold climate."

"The hairs don't mean nothing." Henley was amused, in spite of his
loyalty to his friend. "A heap of men are that way."

"You ain't." Dixie glanced at the rather slender hands of her companion,
and then lifted her eyes to his face slowly and studiously. "You haven't
got a big chunk of a head, either, and flopping, fuzzy ears, and, above
all, Alfred, you ain't dead stuck on yourself. If I marry that man it
will be after I've taken him down several pegs. His vanity fairly leaks
out of him and stands in a puddle at his feet. Well, that don't matter.
When he comes to take me to meeting it will be the talk of the entire
community. Carrie Wade will laugh on the other side of her face. I would
have let him come earlier, but I want to take plenty of time to make me
a dandy dress and get me a new hat. I'm going to cut a wide swath.
That's to be my one big day of triumph and getting even."

CHAPTER XX

It was after nightfall when Henley put Dixie down at the cottage and
drove around to his barn. In the stable doorway lurked a shadow of
uncertain shape and quite motionless. It turned out to be the form of
Jason Wrinkle. The pipe in his mouth glowed like a speeding firefly as
he stepped down to the buggy.

"Hello! Well," he muttered, with a low, significant laugh, "you've come
back--reports notwithstanding to the contrary, female, legal, or
otherwise."

"Yes, I'm back," Henley said, rather curtly. "Anything strange about
it?"

"Well, I was just wonderin'. Huh, in this day and time of new-fangled
ways and doin's a body never knows what will happen. You'll certainly
never know if you listen to talk." Wrinkle peered into the face of his
stepson-in-law quite studiously for a moment, and with no little
irritation Henley unfastened the hamestring wi