Chapter 10 - Page 2

picnic or a Bluebell Grove? Well now, there is. Over on Horned-Toad Creek--nice, pretty name to go with the grove, ain't it?--they've got a patch uh shade big over as my hat. Right back up on the hill is the schoolhouse where they do their dancing, and they've got a table or two and a swing for the kids to fall outa--and they call it Bluebell Grove because yuh never saw a bluebell within ten mile uh the place. That's where the general round-up for the Fourth is pulled off this year--so Jim Bleeker was telling me this morning. We sure got to be present, Dilly."

"I'm afraid I'm not the sort of man to shine in society, William," dissented the other modestly. "You can go, and--"

"Don't yuh never dance?" Billy eyed him speculatively. A man under fifty--and Dill might be anywhere between thirty and forty--who had two sound legs and yet did not dance!

"Oh, I used to, after a fashion. But my feet are so far off that I find communication with them necessarily slow, and they have a habit of embarking in wild ventures of their own. I do not believe they are really popular with the feminine element, William. And so I'd rather--"

"Aw, you'll have to go and try it a whirl, anyhow. We ain't any of us experts. Yuh see, the boys have been accustomed to having the wheels of industry stop revolving on the Fourth, and turning kinda wobbly for four or five days after. I don't feel like trying to break 'em in to keep on working--do you?"

"To use your own term," said Dill, suddenly reckless of his diction, "you're sure the doctor."

"Well, then, the proper dope for this case is, all hands show up at the picnic." He picked up his hat from the floor, slapped it twice against his leg to remove the dust, pinched the crown into four dents, set it upon his head at a jaunty angle and went out, singing softly:

"She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother."

Dill, looking after him, puckered his face into what passed with him for a smile. "I wonder now," he meditated aloud, "if William is not thinking of some particular young lady who--er--who 'cannot leave her mother'." If he had only known it, William was; he was also wondering whether she would be at the picnic. And if she were at the picnic, would she remember him? He had only seen her that one night--and to him it seemed a very long while ago. He thought, however, that he might be able to recall himself to her mind--supposing she had forgotten. It was a long time ago, he kept reminding himself, and the light was poor and he hadn't shaved for a week--he had always afterward realized that with much mental discomfort--and he really did look a lot different when he had on his "war-togs," by which he meant his best clothes. He wouldn't blame her at all if she passed him up for a stranger, just at first. A great deal