g little laugh.

"Not for me, it wasn't. Whilst I had it I used to pack a lock uh that
red hair in my breast pocket and heave sighs over it that near lifted
me out uh my boots. Oh, I was sure earnest! But she did me the
biggest favor she could; a slick-haired piano-tuner come to town and
she turned me down for him. I was plumb certain my heart was busted
wide open, at the time, though." Weary laughed reminiscently.

"She said--I think you misunderstood her. She appears to--" Miss
Satterly, though she felt that she was being very generous, did not
quite know how to finish.

"Not on your life! It was the first time I ever did understand Myrt.
When I left there I wasn't doing any guessing."

"You shouldn't have left," she told him suddenly; gripping her courage
at this bold mention of his flight. How she wished she knew why he
left.

"Oh, I don't know. It was about the only thing I could do, at the
time--the only thing, that is, that I wanted to do. It seemed like I
couldn't get away fast enough." It was brazen of him, she thought, to
treat it all so coolly. "And out here," he added thoughtfully, "I
could get the proper focus on Myrt--which I couldn't do back there."

"Distance lends--"

"Not in this case," he interrupted. "It's when you're right with Myrt
that she kinda hypnotizes yuh into thinking what she wants yuh to
think." He was remembering resentfully the dance.

"But to sneak away--"

"That's a word I don't remember was ever shot at me before," said
Weary, the blood showing through the skin on his cheeks. "If that
damned Myrt has been telling yuh--"

"I didn't think you would speak like that about a woman, Mr. Davidson,"
said the schoolma'am with disapproval in her tone; and the disapproval
not going very deep, there was the more of it upon the surface.

"I suppose it gives evidence of a low, brutal trait in my nature, that
you hoped I couldn't harbor," acceded Weary meekly.

"It does," snapped the schoolma'am, her cheeks hot. If she had
repented her flare of temper over the gopher, she certainly did not
intend letting him know it too soon. She seemed inclined to discipline
him a bit.

Weary smoked silently and raked up the sun-baked soil with his spurs.
"How long is Myrt going to stay?" he ventured at last.

"I never asked her," she retorted. "You ought to know--you probably
have seen her last." The schoolma'am blundered, there.

Weary drew a sigh of relief; if she were jealo