r heads
together and--and sort o' bust it up."

"Well, I don't know, Alf--you are a better schemer than I am. I'm
willin' to help, but I can't git up nothing. If the boy was mine I'd
give 'im a good spankin' in public, and maybe that ud shame Carrie into
behavin' herself."

"If I could get you to help I think I could work a change in the thing,
anyway," Henley said, persuasively.

"Me, Alf?"

"Yes, it's just this way, Jim, with a woman of that brand and vintage,"
Henley pursued. "You see, she's gone without the right sort of attention
so long that she's kind o' lost respect for herself. Jim, you are the
leading young man in Chester, not yet married, and considered a fine
catch. I don't know how it will strike you, but you could really do a
good turn all round if you'd just pay Carrie a little attention. Take
her in your new top buggy to camp-meeting next Sunday."

"Me? Oh, Lord!"

"I don't mean for you to _marry_ her," Henley went on, smoothly. "But if
I'm any judge of women, I think when a man of your stripe drives out in
public with her she'll simply look up again, and, by gum, I believe
she'll look clean over that boy's head. I'm asking you to take part in a
good deed, Jim."

"I see--I understand pine-blank what you mean, but, Alf, I'm not the man
for the job. You'll understand my fix if you'll just study a minute.
You know how it is between me and Julia Hardcastle. I'll never marry no
other woman as long as the sun shines. She hain't never said the word,
nor she hain't plumb pitched me out, either, but she makes me walk a
chalk-line. Why, if she was to see me out with Carrie Wade I'd never
hear the end of it."

"Julia's going to the camp-meeting, ain't she?" Henley asked, cutting a
significant glance at his clerk.

"Yes, she's going with Sam Willis, that Atlanta shoe-drummer. She don't
care for him, mind you, Alf, but she likes to have fellows of that sort
hanging on. She don't seem half as particular about who she goes with as
the company I keep. She's got me where the wool is short, Alf. I
wouldn't rub her the wrong way for the world. I hope to get her some
day, but I'll have to wait till she gits tired of dashing around."

Henley was looking straight into his clerk's face, a smile twinkling in
his kindly eyes. "You are not working that girl right, Jim," he said,
decidedly. "She'd have been yours long ago if you'd had more
independence. If you keep up that sort of a lick she'll waltz off with
some bo