f
Tom an' him don't foller up, they're blamed fools. Now Tom, he ain't no
blamed fool. Fur _not_ bein' a blamed fool, I'll back Tom agin any man in
Hamlin."

So, when the two young figures were seen sauntering along the road
towards the store, there were lookers-on enough to regard them with
interest.

"Now _he's_ my idee of a 'ristycrat," remarked Mr. Doty, with the manner
of a connoisseur. "Kinder tall an' slim, an' high-sperrity lookin';
Sheby's a gal, but she's got it too--thet thar sorter racehorse look.
Now, hain't she?"

"I want you to see the store and the people in it," Sheba was saying.
"It's my home, you know. Uncle Tom took me there the day after I was
born. I used to play on the floor behind the counter and near the stove,
and all those men are my friends."

Rupert had never before liked anything so much as he liked the simple
lovingness of this life of hers. As she knew the mountains, the flowers,
and the trees, she knew and seemed known by the very cows and horses and
people she saw.

"That's John Hutton's old gray horse," she had said as she caught sight
of one rider in the distance. "That is Billy Neil's yoke of oxen," at
another time. "Good-morning, Mrs. Stebbins," she called out, with the
prettiest possible cheer, to a woman in an orange cotton skirt as she
passed on the road. "It seems to me sometimes," she said to Rupert, "as
if I belonged to a family that was scattered over miles and lived in
scores of houses. They all used to tell Uncle Tom what would disagree
with me when I was cutting my teeth."

They mounted the steps of the porch, laughing the light, easy laugh of
youth, and the loiterers regarded them with undisguised interest and
admiration. In her pink cotton frock, and blooming like a rose in the
shade of her frilled pink sunbonnet, Sheba was fair to see. Rupert
presented an aspect which was admirably contrasting. His cool pallor and
dense darkness of eyes and hair seemed a delightful background to her
young tints of bloom.

"Thet thar white linen suit o' his'n," Mr. Doty said, "might hev been put
on a-purpose to kinder set off her looks as well as his'n."

It was to Mr. Doty Sheba went first.

"Jake," she said, "this is my cousin Mr. Rupert De Willoughby from
Delisleville."

"Mighty glad to be made 'quainted, sir," said Jake. "Tom's mightily sot
up at yer comin'."

They all crowded about him and went through the same ceremony. It could
scarcely be called a ceremony, it was