ary been none the worse, had
he not acquired the unfortunate habit of growing up. Even then he
might have escaped injury had he not persisted in growing up and up, a
straight six-feet-two of lovable good looks, with the sunniest of
tempers and blue eyes that reflected the warm sweetness of that nature,
and a smile to tell what the eyes left unsaid.

Such being the tempting length of him, the Girl saw that he was worth
an effort; she took to smoking the chimney of her bedroom lamp, heating
curling irons, wearing her best hat and best ribbons on a weekday, and
insisting upon crowding number four-and-a-half feet into number
three-and-a-half shoes and managing to look as if she were perfectly
comfortable. When a girl does all those things, and when she has a
good complexion and hair vividly red and long, heavy-lidded blue eyes
that have a fashion of looking side-long at a man, it were well for
that man to travel--if he would keep the lightness of his heart and the
sunny look in his eyes and his smile.

Weary traveled, but the trouble was that he did not go soon enough.
When he did go, his eyes were somber instead of sunny, and he smiled
not at all. And in his heart he carried a deep-rooted impulse to shy
always at women--and so came to resemble a horse.

He shied at long, blue eyes and turned his own uncompromisingly away.
He never would dance with a woman who had red hair, except in
quadrilles where he could not help himself; and then his hand-clasp was
brief and perfunctory when it came to "Grand right-and-left." If
commanded to "Balance-_swing_" the red-haired woman was swung airily by
the finger-tips--; which was not the way in which Weary swung the
others.

And then came the schoolma'am. The schoolma'am's hair was the darkest
brown and had a shine to it where the light struck at the proper angle,
and her eyes were large and came near being round, and they were a
velvety brown and also had a shine in them.

Still Weary shied consistently and systematically.

At the leap-year ball, given on New Year's night, when the ladies were
invited to "choose your pardners for the hull dance, regardless of who
brought yuh," the schoolma'am had forsaken Joe Meeker, with whose
parents she boarded, and had deliberately chosen Weary. The Happy
Family had, with one accord, grinned at him in a way that promised many
things and, up to the coming of the Fourth of July, every promise had
been conscientiously fulfilled.

They b