ctively as he solemnly drew his huge
silver time-piece from an unlocated pocket. He held it out into the
bright moonlight.

"Geminy crickets!" he exclaimed. "It's forty-nine minutes to twelve!"
Anderson Crow's policy was to always look at things through the small
end of the telescope.

The slow, hot summer wore away, and to Rosalie it was the longest that
she ever had experienced. She was tired of the ceaseless twaddle of
Tinkletown, its flow of "missions," "sociables," "buggy-horses," "George
Rawlin's new dress-suit," "harvesting," and "politics"--for even the
children talked politics. Nor did the assiduous attentions of the
village young men possess the power to shorten the days for her--and
they certainly lengthened the nights. She liked them because they were
her friends from the beginning--and Rosalie was not a snob. Not for the
world would she have hurt the feelings of one poor, humble, adoring soul
in Tinkletown; and while her smile was none the less sweet, her laugh
none the less joyous, in her heart there was the hidden longing that
smiled only in dreams. She longed for the day that was to bring Elsie
Banks to live with Mrs. Holabird, for with her would come a breath of
the world she had known for two years, and which she had learned to love
so well.

In three months seven men had asked her to marry them. Of the seven, one
only had the means or the prospect of means to support her. He was a
grass-widower with five grown children. Anderson took occasion to warn
her against widowers.

"Why," he said, "they're jest like widders. You know Dave Smith that
runs the tavern down street, don't you? Well, doggone ef he didn't turn
in an' marry a widder with seven childern an' a husband, an' he's led a
dog's life ever sence."

"Seven children and a husband? Daddy Crow!"

"Yep. Her derned husband wouldn't stay divorced when he found out Dave
could support a fambly as big as that. He figgered it would be jest as
easy to take keer of eight as seven, so he perlitely attached hisself to
Dave's kitchen an' started in to eat hisself to death. Dave was goin' to
have his wife apply fer another divorce an' leave the name blank, so's
he could put in either husband ef it came to a pinch, but I coaxed him
out of it. He finally got rid of the feller by askin' him one day to
sweep out the office. He could eat all right, but it wasn't natural fer
him to work, so he skipped out. Next I heerd of him he had married a
widder who was