rse things than hats
during his eventful career; he laid back his ears, shut his eyes tight
and took it meekly.

There came a gasping gurgle from the hammock, and Weary's hand stopped
in mid-air. The girl's head was burrowed in a pillow and her slippers
tapped the floor while she laughed and laughed.

Weary delivered a parting whack, put on his hat and looked at her
uncertainly; grinned sheepishly when the humor of the thing came to him
slowly, and finally sat down upon the porch steps and laughed with her.

"Oh, gee! It was too funny," gasped the girl, sitting up and wiping
her eyes.

Weary gasped also, though it was a small matter--a common little word
of three letters. In all the messages sent him by the schoolma'am, it
was the precise, school-grammar wording of them which had irritated him
most and impressed him insensibly with the belief that she was too prim
to be quite human. The Happy Family had felt all along that they were
artists in that line, and they knew that the precise sentences ever
carried conviction of their truth. Weary mopped his perspiring face
upon a white silk handkerchief and meditated wonderingly.

"You aren't a train-robber or a horsethief, or--anything, are you?" she
asked him presently. "You seemed quite upset at seeing the place
wasn't deserted; but I'm sure, if you are a robber running away from a
sheriff, I'd never dream of stopping you. Please don't mind me; just
make yourself at home."

Weary turned his head and looked straight up at her. "I'm afraid I'll
have to disappoint yuh, Miss Satterly," he said blandly. "I'm just an
ordinary human, and my name is Davidson--better known as Weary. You
don't appear to remember me. We've met before."

She eyed him attentively. "Perhaps we have--it you say so. I'm
wretched about remembering strange names and faces. Was it at a dance?
I meet so many fellows at dances--" She waved a brown little hand and
smiled deprecatingly.

"Yes," said Weary laconically, still looking into her face. "It was."

She stared down at him, her brows puckered. "I know, now. It was at
the Saint Patrick's dance in Dry Lake! How silly of me to forget."

Weary turned his gaze to the hill beyond the creek, and fanned his hot
face with his hat. "It was not. It wasn't at that dance, at all."
Funny she didn't remember him! He suspected her of trying to fool him,
now that he was actually in her presence, and he refused absolutely to
be fooled.

H