rdin' to his tell, he must have hung around that counter all day,
eatin' through the pie list from top to bottom and back again, until
it's a wonder his system ever got over the shock. But Zylphina keeps
tollin' him on with googoo eyes and giggles, sayin' how it does her
good to see a man with a nice, hearty appetite, and before it come time
for him to take the night train back they'd got real well acquainted.
He finds out her first name, and how she's been a whole orphan since
she was goin' on ten.

After that Wilbur makes the trip to Colby Junction reg'lar every
Sunday, and they'd got to the point of talkin' about settin' the day
when she was to become Mrs. Cobb, when Zylphina gets word that an aunt
of hers that kept a boardin' house in Fall River, Massachusetts, wants
her to come on East right away. Aunty has some kind of heart trouble
that may finish her any minute, and, as Zylphina was the nearest
relation she had, there was a show of her bein' heiress to the whole
joint.

Course, Zylphina thinks she ought to tear herself loose from the pie
counter; but before she quits the junction her and Wilbur takes one
last buggy ride, with the reins wound around the whip socket most of
the way. She weeps on Wilbur's shirt front, and says no matter how far
off she is, or how long she has to wait for him to come, she'll always
be his'n on demand. And Wilbur says that just as soon as he can make
the corn and hog vineyard hump itself a little more, he'll come.

So Zylphina packs a shoe box full of fried chicken, blows two months'
wages into a yard of yellow railroad ticket, and starts toward the
cotton mills. It's a couple of months before Wilbur gets any letter,
and then it turns out to be a hard luck tale, at that. Zylphina has
found out what a lime tastes like. She's discovered that the Fall
River aunt hasn't anything more the matter with her heart than the
average landlady, and that what she's fell heiress to is only a chance
to work eighteen hours a day for her board. So she's disinherited
herself and is about to make a bold jump for New York, which she liked
the looks of as she came through, and she'll write more later on.

It was later--about six months. Zylphina says she's happy, and hopes
Wilbur is the same. She's got a real elegant job as cashier in a
high-toned, twenty-five cent, reg'lar-meal establishment, and all in
the world she has to do is to sit behind a wire screen and make change.
It's different f