Part 39

"How can a girl tell?" says she. "Men talk like this to girls----"

"Have they talked to you? Who was it?"

"My social opportunities," says she slow and bitter-like, "seem to be confined to our neighbors' gardener."

"Don't!" says he. "Oh, don't! I don't want to see you hurt, even by your own tongue."

I never'd heard any man hand out any talk of this sort to any girl before. It was right interesting and I was glad I listened.

"How can a girl tell?" says she, like she was talking to herself.

"Shorely she can't tell all at once," he answers. "I'd never ask you to do more than wait. I'd want to go away and stay away till I could come in at your front door and be welcome," says he. "I wouldn't ask you to decide one thing now. But, as for me, I decided everything long ago."

She didn't say nothing.

"As to your money," says he after a while, "listen to me. Look at me--look close. Look into my eyes. Am I not honest? Tell me--if truth like mine can be mistaken for deceit, then what chance has any man on earth?"

She didn't answer, and he goes on like he had stepped up closer--I don't know but what he did.

"Look into my eyes," says he. "Look at me close. Maybe that'll help me some, for shorely you can see how much I----"

"Don't!" says she. "Don't!"

I don't believe she looked into his eyes at all.

"I wouldn't touch you," says he. "I wouldn't touch your hand--I wouldn't touch the hem of your garment. It wouldn't be right. It maybe ain't right for me to think of meeting you again; but it's right this once."

She didn't answer at all. He come to what seemed to trouble him.

"Is it the money?" he says again. "What's money if you've got nothing else?"

"Not much," says she; "not very much."

"I've not coveted it," says he. "It's another commandment I've broke. I've coveted that which was my neighbor's. I've coveted you--no more, so much! If you and I had a shack on the Yellow Bull out there, and forty acres to start with," says he, "out where the sun shines all the time, and the wind is sweet, and the mountains rise up around you----"

"Don't!" says she again. "Don't! Please go away--I can't stand that."

I couldn't stand it neither; so I opened the door.

XVI

HOW I WAS FOREMAN

They jumped apart--or farther apart--when I walked out. They wasn't holding hands, but she must of been looking at him and him at her.

"Miss Wright," says I, quiet--the first time I ever called her Miss Wright in all my life--"Miss Wright," says I, "come up to the house."

"Curly," says she, "oh, don't--don't!"

But she seen I didn't have no gun.

"Get across there quick!" says I to him.

"You overheard!" says he. "You overheard what I've been saying?"