that we would be plodding along at
the same old pace. We would not have felt the need of speeding up. It was
your misfortune that brought Bim into the store. If she wants to retire
and marry you I rather think she is entitled to do it. I don't want any
more fooling around about this matter. Sarah and I couldn't stand it.
She's kept me awake nights talking about it. The thing has worried us
plenty. We rebel and demand action before anything else happens. We feel
as if we had some rights in this case."

"I concede them and second your demand," Harry answered. "Bim must name
a near day. I only need a week to get some clothes made and to go up to
Milwaukee on a little matter of business."

"I don't know whether we'll give him a week or not," said Bim playfully.
"A great many things may happen to him in a week."

CHAPTER XXIV

WHICH DESCRIBES A PLEASANT HOLIDAY AND A PRETTY STRATAGEM.

Two days later Bim suggested that they should take a day's ride in the
open and spend the night at the home of a friend of hers in a settlement
known as Plain's End, Harry having expressed a wish to get out on the
prairies in the saddle after his long term of travel on a steamboat.

"Are you sure that you can stand an all day's journey?" Bim asked.

"I! I could kill a bear with my hands and carry him home on my back and
eat him for dinner," the young man boasted.

"I've got enough of the wild West in me to like a man who can eat bears
if there's nothing better," said Bim. "I didn't know but you'd been
spoiled in the homes of those eastern millionaires. If you're willing to
take what comes and make the best of it, I'll give you a day that you
will remember. You will have to put up with a very simple hospitality but
I wouldn't wonder if you'd enjoy it."

"I can put up with anything so long as I have your help," the young man
answered.

"Then I shall send word that we are coming. We will leave here day after
to-morrow. Our horses will be at the door at eight o'clock in the
morning. We shall take some luncheon and reach our destination late in
the afternoon and return next day. It will give us a good long visit with
each other and you'll know me better before we get back."

"I want to know you as well as I love you," he said. "I suppose it will
be like studying law--one never gets through with it."

"I've found myself a rather abstruse subject--as bad as Coke, of which
Abe used to talk so much with my father," she declared. "