leaf. Carrie had dropped her handkerchief, an' I sprung up and put
it back in her lap with a bow, taking a grip on myself while in the act.
Then I looked Julia in the eyes and said:

"'I couldn't hold my hoss in, Miss Julia; he's a high-stepper, and it
makes 'im hopping mad to see common stock ahead of 'im. The only thing
to do was to let 'im pass everything in sight.'

"She stared at me like she thought I'd lost my senses, and then she
said, 'Well, you ought to apologize; any gentleman would after covering
a lady with dust from a dirty road.'

"'But it wasn't my fault,' I told her, with a grin. 'It is my hoss's
fault. If anybody apologizes it ought to be him, and he can't talk half
as good as he can trot.' Gee whiz, but wasn't she mad? She was splotched
with red and white all over, and the purtiest thing, Alf, that you ever
laid eyes on. She whirled away and went back to her drummer. He had put
the buggy-seat under a tree in sight of where me an' Carrie sat, and,
knowing she was looking, I laid myself out to be pleasant to my partner.
I had to pass by Julia and her dude to get to the spring, and I fetched
water for Carrie every hour in the day, and always went whistling a jig.
At twelve o'clock some of the folks along with Julia come over and
invited me and Carrie to dump our basket in with theirs and all eat
together, but me and Carrie refused, and had ourn on a grassy slant in
plain sight of the rest. It was the first frolic I'd ever had with
Julia, and I shore did like it. I dunno, but I reckon it was the way she
acted that made me keep it up. Then, after dinner, when Carrie went to
Mrs. Wilson's tent to rest up a little, Julia saw me smoking at the
spring, and come straight to me. She had a sort o' give-in look, and yet
was proud and cold.

"'I want to know,' said she, 'what you mean by fetching that old maid
out here.'

"'I don't know as she's so almighty old,' said I, as independent as a
wood-sawyer, and yet scared half out o' my mind. 'I don't know but what
it is a sort of comfort to go with women old enough to be sensible once
in a while.'

"That made her madder'n ever, but, you see, I was making her come to me
with complaints, and that had never happened before. She stood punching
at the ground with her blue parasol and looking every now and then
toward Mrs. Wilson's tent like she was afraid Carrie would come. Then
all at once I saw that her pretty lips was quivering. I was dying to
grab her, Alf, and