and ambling nags. He was fiery-red as to both cheeks, disorganized completely as to eyes and mouth. "Take it from me, who's lived a lot longer than you, boy, and maybe seen more—yes, maybe seen a leetle bit more," said Henry, "and don't let your desires go strayin' in that direction, Skeeter. Stick to the village girls and let the artusses alone." There was a gentleness in his voice, a surety and an ominousness, that held the youth spellbound, amazed, by the old man's penetration. Henry, without even looking at him, understood. In a way perhaps related to his ability to locate underground springs, and to foretell a storm two days ahead of time, rather through some direct and subtle channel than through anything Skeeter had said or done, he had penetrated to Skeeter's emotions. His ability to locate well-sites and to foretell storms was not infallible; but his mistakes were more than counterbalanced by his astonishing successes; and, in Skeeter's case, he knew that he had surmised true. "No, sir, it don't pay for plain folks like you and me, Skeeter, to get mixed up with artusses, except in the common run o' business and a noddin' acquaintance," he continued gravely. "Not but what Miss Westbrook don't appear to be a fine girl. But the finer they are, the more a fellow had ought to watch out. Your own father'd tell you the same if he was alive; and you'd listen to him respectful and quiet, just like you're listenin' to me because you got some nat'ral respect for age and experience and then go and do just as you've a mind to," finished Henry, with swift tartness. "Well-go ahead! Folks got to pay for their schoolin' in this world." Skeeter laughed foolishly, admiringly. Henry proceeded: "Young men got to learn, and they most gin'ly pay for their schoolin', too. Free advice don't git 'em nowhere. I might as well a-kep' quiet for all the good it'll do." He paused; Skeeter's silence indicated assent; he continued: "Now, as I was sayin', I want you to go up to the Klings'." "Yes, sir!" Skeeter was made vocal by that, at any rate. "And ask for Miss Clotilde Westbrook." 66 "Yes, sir!" 'And when you git her alone-kinda bow her out onto the porch, or something, lookin' kinda important, secret, you know for it had ought to be alone, Skeeter." "Yes, sir!" And when you get her alone, just say: 'Mr. Hooghtyling sent me to tell you he particular wants to see you before you decide definite about anything.' Just say that." "Yes, sir!" "You needn't mention the wash, though that's what I refer to. Just say what I told you, then say: ' In order to save you climbin' that old hill again, Mr. Hooghtyling 'll be waitin' round the corner o' the road by the Brookses' lower pasture, 'bout half a mile from the village, any time from one to four o'clock. He hopes you'll be reasonable, and not start nawthin' till you see him.' Now, then, can you remember all that? Because they ain't a word of it but what's important!" "Yes, sir!" "Well, let's hear you say it over." Skeeter repeated it almost word for word. Henry was surprised and gratified; he shrewdly suspected the cause of Skeeter's sharpened memory. "That's good," he said; "I guess the person you're goin' to say it to's had something to do with how much notice you've took of it. Maybe, for your own sake, I'd ought to send somebody else. You want to 'member specially those two words-reasonable, and not to start nawthin'. Now" Henry made a great show of putting his hand in his pocket. "How much do I owe you for that little errant?" "Nothin' at all, Mr. Hooghtyling-glad to do it to oblige a customer!" said Skeeter. "Reasonable' and 'not to start nawthin'!' Well, from all I saw of her, Mr. Hooghtyling, she looked reasonable. I bet you get that wash, all right." 66 Um-ye-es," admitted Henry. Maybe I'll get that wash, and maybe she looked reasonable. But you can't always tell, Skeeter, from the looks of a frog, how fur it'll jump." Skeeter agreed, with an exhilarated chuckle, that you couldn't. It seemed wildly incongruous to compare Clotilde to a frog. Clotilde-stars-wild roses— "It's just simply downright dead impossible!" asseverated Henry Hooghtyling, grim as a country judge. And yet, at bottom, he wasn't so grim because of that. Wilfulness, sudden headstrong whims and fancies-a girl's will, even more than a boy's, it may be, is the wind's will. He thought of her mother, of old, far-off, unhappy, happy, and heart-catching things. The stage was uninterestingly empty to such artusses and village folk as happened to notice it as it rattled precariously up toward the Inn; a withered old farmer, in ill-fitting black "city" clothes, bowed moodily forward, corded brown hands on his skinny knees, sat beside the semi-comatose, bowed, vacant-eyed country youth who held the lines. Stolid, humble, casual to innocuousness were horses, rig, driver, and sole passenger; and yet never argosy made port more richly laden with the gold of romance, the pale yellow gold of old memories and the bright red gleaming gold of young hopes, with spices from Araby, and costly bales. CHAPTER VI TRUTH, AFTER MUCH KNOCKING ABOUT, IS WEL- ALTHOUGH NOT, PERHAPS, FOR HER OWN UNA- WHEN Skeeter knocked at the front door of the Klings' bungalow, at one-thirty that afternoon, after delaying in order to give Clotilde time for luncheon as well as to give himself time for a hardly necessary shave and a general "dolling up" that might have been considered more necessary, Clotilde didn't hear him. At the time of his knock she was standing in the Klings' living-room, alone except for the immediate proximity of Mr. Carey Beemis. At the precise instant when Skeeter's first palpitating knock came on the upper half of the big divided Dutch door, not ten feet from her ear, Clotilde was saying: "When I admitted that I had no moral objections to your making love to me, I meant to infer that I might have other objections quite as valid. Please take your arm away.” "Paradise Lost!" murmured Mr. Beemis, half-way obeying, looking so brightly, boyishly, drolly forlorn that it would have been impossible for any woman with a trace of the mother-instinct to be too hard on him. Clotilde protested: "If only you weren't so stupid about some things-you're just like all the old G. V. crowd-it's sex, sex, sex! After all I've told you, after |