cter's
all I've got, Alfred; if you are what I think you are, you'd think twice
before compromising me like that. Carrie Wade _would_ talk then, sure
enough. Married men don't go about having fisticuffs over girls that
live next door to 'em without folks wondering, and I tell you I'm like
that fellow Caesar's wife--I'm too good to be wondered about in any shape
or form."

"I know it--God knows I know it," Henley responded, under his trembling
breath. "You needn't be afraid, Dixie. I'll take care. But you didn't
tell me what answer you made to--to Long's apology, or whether you was
going to let him come again or not."

"I wrote him a pretty nice sort of a letter." She was laughing as she
bent over her pail, but he didn't know it. "You see, Alfred, I was
afraid you had hurt the poor fellow's feelings that day, and I thought
_somebody_ ought to be mild-tempered. I told 'im that wasn't no place or
time, anyway, to kiss a girl--right in front of the door of her
house--that a girl naturally liked to be wheedled awhile before she set
in on such familiar terms, and that if it had been a _third_ visit,
instead of jest the _second_, that I'd have taken him for a stroll down
by the creek. There's a foot-log there plumb hid by willows, Alfred, and
I always thought it would be fine to set on it with your feet dangling
over the stream and see two sweethearts reflected in the clear water,
his arm round her waist and her head on his shoulder. Now, that's the
sort of thing this chicken has always had a yearning for, and--" Dixie
tittered inaudibly in the pail and said nothing more.

He had drawn himself erect and stood as full of despair as the night was
full of darkness. She heard him utter a low groan, but that was all. She
peered up at him stealthily, and then, with a face warm with content,
she resumed her work. He stood silent till she rose.

"Now that dratted calf can come to the second table," she said, in the
most uneventful tone imaginable. "Alfred, will you please let him in?
He's about to butt the gate down."

He walked stiffly across the lot and opened the gate. The calf shot past
him like an animated cannon-ball. He met her as, with the pail on her
arm, she had turned toward the cottage.

"I'm too big a fool to ever understand you, Dixie," he gulped, as they
paused face to face. "Since me and you parted the--the other day I--I've
been plumb crazy. I got to thinking things that are too far off--too
nigh the gates of h