allaberger and Arnold Arker. A year
hence people would ask me if I had been a railroad man in my time.

She called me modest. That very morning Tim told me she was coming.
She had made some jellies, so she said, for the soldier of the valley.
They were her offering to the valley's idol. She thought the idol
would consume them, for bachelor cooking was never intended for
bachelor invalids. Tim had mentioned this casually. I suspected that
he believed that the visit to me was simply a pretence and that she
knew he was to be working in the field by the house. But I took no
chances. In the seclusion of my room I brushed every speck off the
uniform and made sure that every inch of it fitted snugly and without
an unnecessary wrinkle. Then when my hair had been parted and smoothed
down, I crowned myself with my campaign hat at the dashingest possible
tilt. Thus arrayed I fixed myself on the porch, to be smoking my pipe
in a careless, indifferent way when she came. An egotist, you say--a
vain man. No--just a man. For who when She comes would not look his
best? We prate a lot about the fair sex and its sweet vanities. Yet
it takes us less time to do our hair simply because it is shorter.

When Mary comes! The gate latch clicked and I whistled the
sprightliest air I knew. Down in the field Tim appeared from the maze
of corn-stalks and looked my way beneath a shading hand. There were
foot-falls on the porch. Had they been light I should have kept on
whistling in that careless way; but now I looked up, startled. Before
me stood not Mary, but Josiah Nummler.

[Illustration: Josia Nummler.]

It was kind of Josiah to come, for he is an old man and lives a full
mile above the village, half way up the ridge-side. He is very fat,
too, from much meditation, and to aid his thin legs in moving his bulky
body he carries a very long stick, which he uses like a paddle to
propel him; so when you see him in the distance he seems to be standing
in a canoe, sweeping it along. Really he is only navigating the road.
He had a clothes-prop with him that day, and pausing at the end of the
porch, he leaned on it and gasped. I ought to have been pleased to see
Josiah.

"Well, Mark," he said, "I am glad you're home. Mighty! but you look
improved."

He gasped again and smiled through his bushy beard.

"Thank you," said I, icily, waving him toward a chair.

Josiah sat down and smiled again.

"It just does me good to see you