he already owns a corner lot on Tilbury
Avenue, the swell street of the town. The truth is, he wants to take a
look at you powerful bad, and I promised him, if it was possible, that I
would--"

"Well, I don't know about that," Dixie objected suddenly, and her pretty
brow wrinkled. "You know what they say about a burnt child. I've already
as good as offered myself to one chap. I didn't come up to requirements,
and I don't want to do it again. What you'd say to _him_ about me and
what he'd actually _think_ are two different things. If I was to meet
him and I saw from his looks that he didn't think much of your judgment
I'd hate you both and feel like scratching your eyes out. I'd make a
sensible man a good wife, and I'd do my part; but I'll be hanged if I'll
walk up to him wearing a 'For Sale' tag. What you say is mighty
interesting, and I may let it bother me a good deal, for a woman owes it
to herself to look out for number one, but there is a line of
self-respect that a woman can't cross. I'm in an awful mess, and I'd
marry to get out of it. You may say what you please about me to him, but
that's as far as I'll go."

"You don't think you could send the poor chap some word or other?"
Henley ventured, at the end of his diplomacy, as he got into his buggy
and took up the reins.

"No, I don't," was the thoughtful answer. "He's a friend of yours, and
you recommend him high enough, but we hain't been introduced, and to
take any step beforehand on _my_ side would be unbecoming of a lady, and
that's what I am."

"Yes--of course, and you know best," said Henley, as he clucked to his
horse, "but Long will be powerfully disappointed. He's got sort of
keyed up over this thing, and it has gone and unsettled him. I reckon
he's got a pretty picture of you in his mind, and keeps it before him
all the time."

"That's it," said Dixie. "And I wouldn't like to see it turn to a chromo
on his hands. I know what I look like to myself, but I wouldn't expect
to suit every taste."

CHAPTER XVII

That evening, just after dark, when Henley drove his horse into his
barn-yard, he saw Dixie over in her own lot milking her cow. She was a
brave, erect little figure as she stood in the soft, black loam. "So,
so!" she was saying in her sweet, persuasive voice to the restless
animal. "Can't you stand still and keep that pesky fly-brush out of my
eyes? Them hairs cut like so many knives when they are flirted about
like a wagon-whip. You