hat all was well, I folded my
wings an' went to roost on the leather bunk again.

Twice more that night the clanging bell summoned me to go forth an'
chase imaginary Chinamen, an' then my patience begun to get baggy at
the knees. I wanted to be up in time to gather the milk before the heat
of the day, an' I was a couple o' nights shy on my sleep already. The
last time I took Fido along an' dropped him into the feed-bin, where he
could hunt Chinamen to his heart's content 'thout disturbin' my beauty
sleep.

Our days flowed along smooth an' peaceful; but most o' the nights I put
in huntin' Chinamen. No, I wouldn't have killed one if I could have
found him--well, not all at once. I got so I could churn an' dust an'
do fancy cookin', until if they'd been any men in that locality, I
reckon one would have chose me to be his wife--an' then came the cousin.

She'd been tellin' me all about him--it's miraculous the way a
woman's talk'll flow after it's been dammed up a spell. He was from
Virginie an' was goin' to college to study chemistry, whatever that is;
an' he was an athlete an' a quarter-back an' a coxswain--oh, he was the
whole herd, the cousin was. I begun to feel shy whenever I thought of
him. I feared he might arrive when I was peelin' spuds with my apron
on, an' he might choose to kiss me.

I drove to the station after him; but nobody got off the train except a
nice lookin' boy with outlandish clothes, an' a couple o' trunks. After
the train had pulled out, he sez to me, "Can you tell me the way to
Mrs. B. A. Cameron's?"

"I can sight you purty close," sez I. "That's my present headquarters.
You--you ain't Ralph Chester Stuart, are ya?"

"You win," sez he, as though we had made mud-pies together. "Come on,
let's load the trunks an' trip toward where ther's a noise like food.
I'm troubled with what they call a famine."

We drove along, an' he was as merry as a bug an' talked a langwidge the
like of nothin' that I had ever met up with before; but I was tryin' to
fit his real size with my idea of it. I had been lookin' for a
six-footer with bulgy muscles an' a grippy jaw. This pink-cheeked boy
didn't look like no athlete to me. He was so cute an' sweet that I felt
like hangin' a string o' coral beads around his neck an' savin' him for
my adopted daughter. I had just concluded to hand over the dish-washin'
right at the start, when he fished up a pipe out of a case, filled it,
an' begun to puff like a grown-up, an