to-morrow and call?"

"I guess--well, I guess you hadn't better go right off the first thing
in the morning, Aunt Maria," Hart said. Thinking of his aunt going
calling at the Forest Queen and running up against Tenderfoot Sal, he
said, gave him the regular cold shakes. "And come to think of it," he
said, "it's no use your going to-morrow at all. Mrs.--Mrs. Major
Rogers, as I happen to know, went up to Denver yesterday; and she
won't be back, she told me, before some time on in the end of next
week--likely as not, she said, she wouldn't come then."

By that time they'd got along to Hart's store, and Hart said: "Here's
where I live, Aunt Maria. You see what sort of a place it is. But I've
done my best to fix things for you as well as I know how. Come right
along in--and when we've had supper we've got to have a talk."

* * * * *

Along about ten o'clock that night Hart come down to the Forest Queen
looking pale and haggard, and he was that broke up he had to get three
drinks in him before he could say a word. Everybody was so interested,
wanting to hear what he had to tell 'em, he didn't need to ask to have
the game stopped--it just stopped of its own accord.

When he'd had his third drink, and was beginning to feel better, he
said he couldn't thank everybody enough for the way they'd behaved;
and that his aunt had gone to bed tired out; and he'd been talking
with her steady for two hours getting things settled; and she'd ended
by agreeing she'd start back East with him the next night--he having
made out he'd smash in his business if he waited a minute longer--and
they was going by the Denver train. And he'd got her fixed he said, so
she'd keep quiet through the morning--as she was going right at
mending his stockings and things the first thing when she got up; and
after that she was full of getting to work with canned peaches and
making him a pie.

"But what's going to happen in the afternoon," he said, "the Lord only
knows! That blasted fool of a Ben Hill"--Hart spoke just that bitter
way about it--"hasn't had no more sense 'n to go and tell her this
town's full of kindergartens, and she's so worked up there's no
holding her, as kindergartens happens to be the fullest hand she
holds. I've allowed we have one--things being as they was, I had
to--but I've told her it's out of order, and the children laid up with
whooping-cough, and the teacher sick a-bed, and the outfit dam