all your
cerridges, and you'll be wantin' me to help clean the seats, too,
I'll warrant, and you're agoin' to hire into the bargain, with him
owin' you and owin' everybody else in town."

"Now, Dilly, I didn't say I was agoin' to," protested Rawdy.

"An' me needin' a new dress, and 'ain't had one to my back for two
years, and them Carroll women in a different one every time they
appear out, and the girl having enough clothes for a Vanderbilt. I
guess Stella Griggs will rue the day. She's a fool, and always was.
If you can afford to give that man money you can afford to get me a
new dress. I'd go to the weddin'--it's free, in the church--if I had
anything decent to wear."

"Now, Dilly, what can I do? I leave it to you," asked Samson Rawdy,
with confessed helplessness.

"Do?" said she. "Why, tell him he's got to pay ahead or he can't have
the cerridges. If you're afraid to, I'll ask him. I ain't afraid."

"Lord! I ain't afraid, Dilly," said Rawdy.

"You'd better clean up, after supper, an' go up there and tell him,"
said Dilly Rawdy, mercilessly.

In the end Rawdy obeyed, having shaved and washed, and set forth.
When he returned he was jubilant.

"He's a gentleman, I don't care what they say," said he, "and he
treated me like a gentleman. Gave me a cigar, and asked me to sit
down. He was smokin', himself, out on the porch. The women folks were
in the house.

"Did he pay you?" asked Mrs. Rawdy.

Then Rawdy shook a fat roll of bills in her face. "Look at here,"
said he.

"The whole of it?"

"Every darned mill; my cerridges and the New Sanderson ones, too."

"Well, now, ain't you glad you did the way I told you to?"

"Lord! he'd paid me, anyway," declared Rawdy. "He's a gentleman.
Women are always dreadful scart."

"It's a pity men wasn't a little scarter sometimes," said his wife.

Rawdy, grinning, tossed a bill to her. "Wa'n't you sayin' you wanted
a dress?" said he.

"I ruther guess I do. I 'ain't had one for two years."

"I guess I'd better git a silk hat to wear. I suppose I shall have to
drive some of the Carrolls' folks," said Rawdy, with a timid look at
his wife. A silk hat had always been his ambition, but she had always
frowned upon it.

"Well, I would," said she, cordially.

Samson Rawdy told everybody how Carroll had paid him in
advance--"every cent, sir; and he didn't believe, for his part, half
the stories that were told about him. He guessed that he paid, in the
long run, as well a