ould be. He must have
liked what I said, for he wrote back that it was cute, and that he'd bet
I was one girl that never had been kissed. Well, he can think that, too,
if he wants to. It won't do him any harm. I say all this was going on,
but I never dreamt of closing the deal till I got in this present
money-tight. You see, I wrote him about my financial trouble, and he
said he had saved up some money and that he could wipe out all my
obligations, and that me and him together would make a fine team on the
farm. He wrote so kind, too, about Ma and Aunt Mandy, and said he'd
always want 'em with us. You see, I felt grateful, and, considering
everything, I think I acted wise--don't you?"

Henley half nodded, and tried to meet her frankness with a smile that
was free from doubt. At this juncture Pomp came back with a telegram. It
was an order from an Atlanta hotel for a quantity of eggs and butter.
Henley read it and handed it back. "Tell Jim to quote the lowest cash
prices," he said, absent-mindedly.

"But it's a order, suh," said the negro.

"Oh yes; I see it is. Well, ship it; it's all right."

"Would you like to see his picture?" Dixie asked. She had taken the
crude tintype from her pocket and held it in her lap.

"Yes, I would," Henley replied, and he took the picture and looked at
it. He didn't like it. A keen, quick reader of men's faces, he saw what
had escaped her less experienced eye. There was something that bespoke
prodigious vanity and lack of principle in the low brow, over which the
coarse, black hair was plastered down so smoothly; in the heavy,
carefully waxed, curled, and perhaps dyed mustache; in the small,
conscious eyes, set close together; in the grossly sensuous mouth, from
which a weak chin receded.

"He ain't as purty as he thinks he is by a long shot," Dixie remarked,
rather lamely, for she was slightly chilled by Henley's failure to
comment favorably on the picture, "but he has a good heart. He is a
church member in fair standing, and has a Bible class of young ladies in
Sunday-school, and was once proposed for superintendent, and lost out
because he was unmarried and too young. Oh, I've thought it all over.
I'm not jumping without looking for a spot to light on. I thought I
could carry my load through, but I had to give in. I can't perform
miracles, Alfred; I'm just clay, and the wrong gender of that. If I
could keep temptation out of my way I might keep on, but I can't run
against Carrie