me
like she is having too good a time running here and there to want to
settle down. Sometimes I git blue and think she is just holding me as a
safe thing to land on while she looks the field over. I have to stay
here and attend to business and see her gallivanting in her ruffles and
flounces with every drummer and lightning-rod agent that comes along."

"Maybe you ought to sorter lay down the law, at least on that particular
point," Henley submitted, delicately. "I've heard my step-daddy-in-law
say that a woman was born to be commanded, and when they ain't they hop
to t'other extreme and just loll about in their abuse of a feller's
good-nature. I don't know--that's the old man's view. You might give out
a decided order or two, Jim, and see how--"

"Not to a woman you are tryin' to marry," said the clerk, quite firmly.
"Sech a thing might be done to an army of soldiers or a red-handed mob
at a lynchin'-bee, but not to a gal that makes you feel like you are
sinking down in a mire whenever she looks you in the eyes. No, Alf, not
to a gal as purty and sweet as a bunch of roses, and that knows it, and
is in the habit o' being told of it as regular as eatin' and sleepin'. A
gal like that sort o' feels 'er oats, as the feller said. She knows
she's the stuff, and she loves to be told of it as much as a cat loves
to sleep in the sun."

"Well, I'll be dadblamed if I'd tag after her without _some_ substantial
hope," Henley opined, wisely. "Life is long and life is earnest, and
beauty is only skin deep, anyways. It seems to me--_now_, at least--that
if I was out on the hunt for a helpmeet I'd look to the _solid_
qualities in a woman just as I would in a man I wanted to work with. I'd
study her character, her pluck under trying circumstances, her industry,
and her all-round good-nature. The shape and face and furbelows,
eyebrows and color of bangs, would be the last consideration."

"I never hear that from any but married men," Jim said. "They sing that
song till they bury their wives, and then they turn to boys again and
pick the youngest and prettiest they can lay their hands on."

"I was just thinking, Jim"--Henley seemed unwilling to combat the last
assertion. His eyes rested thoughtfully on a sunny spot before the open
door--"you see, I've got a little neighbor that--"

"I know--Dixie Hart! I know who you mean," the clerk broke in. "She's
all wool and a yard wide, but I never run across her till after I'd got
in with old