more, well established in their
familiarity, with only the journey still lying between themselves and
Bennington.

"If you could," she said, laughing. "If only you could ride home like
this."

"With Monte and my six-shooter?" he asked. "To your mother?"

"I don't think mother could resist the way you look on a horse."

But he said "It this way she's fearing I will come."

"I have made one discovery," she said. "You are fonder of good clothes
than I am."

He grinned. "I cert'nly like 'em. But don't tell my friends. They would
say it was marriage. When you see what I have got for Bennington's
special benefit, you--why, you'll just trust your husband more than
ever."

She undoubtedly did. After he had put on one particular suit, she arose
and kissed him where he stood in it.

"Bennington will be sorrowful," he said. "No wild-west show, after all.
And no ready-made guy, either." And he looked at himself in the glass
with unbidden pleasure.

"How did you choose that?" she asked. "How did you know that homespun
was exactly the thing for you?"

"Why, I have been noticing. I used to despise an Eastern man because his
clothes were not Western. I was very young then, or maybe not so very
young, as very--as what you saw I was when you first came to Bear Creek.
A Western man is a good thing. And he generally knows that. But he has
a heap to learn. And he generally don't know that. So I took to watching
the Judge's Eastern visitors. There was that Mr. Ogden especially, from
New Yawk--the gentleman that was there the time when I had to sit up all
night with the missionary, yu' know. His clothes pleased me best of all.
Fit him so well, and nothing flash. I got my ideas, and when I knew I
was going to marry you, I sent my measure East--and I and the tailor are
old enemies now."

Bennington probably was disappointed. To see get out of the train merely
a tall man with a usual straw hat, and Scotch homespun suit of a
rather better cut than most in Bennington--this was dull. And his
conversation--when he indulged in any--seemed fit to come inside the
house.

Mrs. Flynt took her revenge by sowing broadcast her thankfulness that
poor Sam Bannett had been Molly's rejected suitor. He had done so much
better for himself. Sam had married a rich Miss Van Scootzer, of the
second families of Troy; and with their combined riches this happy
couple still inhabit the most expensive residence in Hoosic Falls.

But most of Bennington so