e city to get some
groceries for harvest. Goin' to the sociable to-morrow?"

"You bet," replied the friend, "You?"

"I d'know; mebbe, if the boys'll go. Ta-ta; see ye later." And away she
spun.

Belleplain had not thriven, or to be more exact, it had had a rise and
fall; and as the rise had been considerable, so the fall was something
worth chronicling. It was now a collection of wooden buildings, mostly
empty, graying under the storms and suns of pitiless winters and
summers, and now, just in mid-summer, surrounded by splendid troops and
phalanxes of gorgeous sunflowers, whose brown crowns, gold-dusted,
looked ever toward the sun as it swung through the wide arch of
cloudless sky. The signs of the empty buildings still remained, and one
might still read the melancholy decline from splendours of the past in
"emporiums," "palace drug stores," and "mansion-houses."

As Flaxen would have said, "Belleplain's boom had bu'sted." Her glory
had gone with the C., B. and Q., which formed the junction at Boomtown
and left the luckless citizens of Belleplain "high and dry" on the
prairie, with nothing but a "spur" to travel on. However, a few stores
yet remained in the midst of desolation.

After making her other purchases, Flaxen entered the "red-front drug
store" to secure the special brand of gum which seemed most delectable
and to buy a couple of cigars for the "boys."

The clerk, who was lately from the East, and wore his moustache curled
upward like the whiskers of a cat, was "gassing" with another young
man, who sat in a chair with his heels on the counter.

"Well, my dear, what can I do for you to-day?" he said, winking at the
loafer, as if to say, "Now watch me."

"I want some gum."

"What kind, darling?" he asked, encouraged by the fellow in the chair.

"I ain't your darling.--Kerosene, shoofly, an' ten cents' worth."

"Say, Jack," drawled the other fellow, "git onto the ankles! Say,
sissy, you picked your dress too soon. She's goin' to be a daisy, first
you know. Ain't y', honey?" he said, leaning over and pinching her arm.

"Let me alone, you great, mean thing! I'll tell ol' pap on you, see if
I don't," cried Flaxen, her eyes filling with angry tears. And as they
proceeded to other and bolder remarks she rushed out, feeling vaguely
the degradation of being so spoken to and so touched. It seemed to
become more atrocious the more she thought upon it.

When she reached home there were still signs of tears on