ld and daring chap one of these days and give you the merry
ha-ha. The truth is, she wants you, but she wants you to be more of a
man. You've tried your sort of way long enough, now switch off and try
mine just for one single day, anyway, and see if I ain't right. Solomon
himself--and he was the greatest masher in the Bible--even he couldn't
win a woman by letting her have her own way. A woman thinks a man is a
sissy that gives in to her every whim. You just take Carrie Wade to
meeting like any other free-born American citizen has a right to do, and
Julia Hardcastle will set up and take notice, and she'll think a sight
more of you--that is, if you don't knuckle under and beg her pardon the
minute she mentions it to you."

Cahews's jaw was really a massive member, and it looked as solid as
stone when he finally answered, which he did when he had stood down on
the floor and walked to and fro for a moment in deep and turbulent
thought.

"She nor no other woman could make me knuckle if I didn't want to," he
said, pausing and resting a steady hand on the shoulder of his employer.
"I've been giving in all along, but I'm tired, dang tired. Here she's
going with that town-dude Sunday and expects me to drive out there by
myself and enjoy the sight from afar. Derned if I don't believe, as you
say, that I've been giving that girl too much rein and floundering about
too much in the dust at her feet. Alf, I'll write a note to Carrie this
minute, and I'll give the old girl a good time if I know how."

"Well, you go back to the desk and write the note," said Henley. "Mark
my words, I'll bet, if you hold a stiff lip all through, you'll
accomplish in a day what you haven't in all these years."

CHAPTER XXII

The next day, as Henley was walking home in the dusk and was passing
Mrs. Cartwright's cottage, she saw him and hastened out to the fence.
She was in a flutter of excitement, rubbing her thin hands together in
vast satisfaction.

"Alfred," she began, "I want to tell you what's happened. I'm so excited
I'm as limber as a dish-rag. Jim Cahews sent a note over by your nigger
yesterday to Carrie Wade invitin' her to drive to the campground with
him Sunday."

"Oh, Jim's going to take _her_?" said Henley, his eyes twinkling. "He's
a sly dog about his doings, and don't tell me all he does."

"That hain't the main thing, Alfred." The old woman raised her hands to
her face and laughed immoderately. "Pomp had no sooner gone o