Dixie Hart | Page 2

and saw him. She flushed a shade

deeper than was due to her exercise, and with the axe in hand she came
to him. Her large hazel eyes held a mystic charm behind the long lashes
which seemed actually to melt into the soft pinkness of her skin.
"Good-morning, Alfred," she greeted him, her lips curling in a smile. "I
know this ain't where you sell goods, but I thought it might save me a
trip to town to ask you if you keep axes at your store. This old plug of a
thing is about as sharp as a sledgehammer."
"I've got a few poked away behind the counters somewhere," he
laughed, as he always did over her droll and original speech, "but the
handles ain't in them, and that is a job for a blacksmith, if they are ever
made to hold. Let me see that thing." He took the axe from her, and ran
his thumb along the blunt and gapped edge. "Look here, Dixie," he said,
"I thought you was too sensible a farmer to discard good tools. This axe
is an old-timer; you don't find such good-tempered steel in the axes
made to sell these days, with their lying red and blue labels pasted on
'em. Give this one a good grinding and it will chop all the wood you'll
ever want to cut. Let me have it this morning. I've got a grindstone at
the store, and I'll make Pomp put a barber's edge on it."
"Of course you'll let me pay--"
"Pay nothing!" he broke in. "That nigger is taking the dry rot; he's
asleep under the counter half the time. The idea of you delving in the
hot sun with a tool that won't cut mud! You oughtn't to chop wood,
nohow. You ain't built for it. Your place is in the parlor of some rich
man's house, leaning back in a rocking-chair, with a good carpet under
foot."
"That's the song mother and Aunt Mandy sing from morning to night,"
the girl smiled, showing her perfect teeth. "They want me to quit work,
and get some man to tote my load. I reckon if the average young fellow
out looking for a wife could see behind the hedge he'd think twice
before he jumped into the thorns."
Henley laughed again, his eyes resting admiringly on her animated face.
"I reckon the gals wouldn't primp so much either if they could see the

insides of their prize-packages," he returned. "I reckon neither side is as
wise while courting is going on as they are after the knot is tied. Folks
hereabouts certainly have plenty to say about me and my venture."
There was a frank admission of the truth of his remark in the girl's reply.
"Well, if I was you, I wouldn't let anything they say bother me," she
said, sympathetically. "Mean people will say mean things; but you've
got friends that stick to you powerful close. I've heard many a one say
that in taking your wife's father-and mother-in-law to live with you, and
treating them as nice as you have, you are doing what not one man in
ten thousand would do."
"I don't deserve any credit for that--not one bit," the young man
declared. "I'm not going to pass as better than I am, Dixie; I'm just
human, neither better nor worse than the average. I reckon you've heard
about how I happened to get married?"
"Not from you, Alfred," the girl answered, in a kindly tone. "I have
often wondered if the busybodies got it straight. I've heard that you
used to go to see your wife before she married the first time."
"Yes, me and Dick Wrinkle was both after her in a neck-and-neck race,
taking her to parties, corn-shuckings, and anything that was got up.
Hettie never was, you know, exactly pretty, but she had a sort o' queer,
say-little way about her that caught my eye. I was a gawky boy, as
green as a gourd, and never had been about with women. Dick was just
the opposite: he was a reckless, splurging chap that dressed as fine as a
fiddle, wasn't afraid to talk, joke, and carry on, and he could dance to a
queen's taste; so he naturally had all the gals after him. I was afraid he
was going to cut me out, and I was fool enough to--well, I used to hope,
when I'd see him so popular in company, that he'd make another choice.
And he might--he might have done it--for he was the most
wishy-washy chap that ever cocked his eye at a woman; he might, I say,
if me an' him hadn't had a regular knock-down-and-drag-out row. He
was drinking once, and said more than I could stand about