dollars so the Five may be as happy as I am to-night; only there aren't
five other Crags. I know it will be a life-long mortification to him to
have me do it, but he lost his chance to-night grand-mothering me. Still,
I did turn my lips away. I was not quite ready then--I am now.

If he wants to go on wearing clothes like that I'm going to let him,
even on the Senate floor, but I can't ever stand for Cousin Jasmine to
cut his hair any more. I want to do it myself, and I'm going to tell her
so, and why. She and I have cried over that miniature of the lost young
Confederate cousin of hers and she'll understand me.

But as I think it over--it always is best to be kind, and I believe I'll
let him get through this rally--it's just four days--free and happy man.

I don't know whether to go in and wake up Jane or not. I would like to
go to sleep with that kiss revelation between us, but maybe it is my
duty to the Five to extract some data from her while it is fresh, on the
foam. I am afraid it is going to go hard with her, but somehow I have a
newborn faith in Polk that makes me feel that he will make it as easy as
he can for her.

Isn't it a glorious thing to realize that neither she nor I will have to
sit and be tortured by waiting to see what those men are going to do?

CHAPTER IX

DYNAMITE

When a man injures a woman's feelings by any particular course of
conduct to which she objects, the maternal in her rises to the surface
and she treats and forgives him as she would a naughty child,--but a man
makes any kind of woman-affront into a lover's quarrel. That is what
masculine Glendale has been doing to its women folks for four days, and
I believe everybody has been secretly enjoying it.

As to the rally, they have stood aside with their hands in their pockets
and their noses in the air, and if it hadn't been for Aunt Augusta and
Nell and Jane being natural-born carpenters and draymen, we might have
had to give it up and let them go on with it to their own glory.

When Nell and Jane went to see Mr. Dodd about building the long tables
to serve the barbecue dinner on, he said he was too busy to do it and
hadn't even any lumber to sell.

Then things happened in my back yard that it sounds like a romance to
write about. Jane sent me over to borrow the Crag's team and wagon and
Henrietta and Cousin Martha and any of the rest of his woman-impedimenta
that I could get. He was out of town, trying a case over at Bol