The Brown Mouse

CHAPTER XVI
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH

A good deal of water ran under the Woodruff District bridges in the weeks between the school election and the Fourth of July picnic at Eight-Mile Grove. They were very important weeks to Jim Irwin, though outwardly uneventful. Great events are often mere imperceptible developments of the spirit.

Spring, for instance, brought a sort of spiritual crisis to Jim; for he had to face the accusing glance of the fields as they were plowed and sown while he lived indoors. As he labored at the tasks of the Woodruff school he was conscious of a feeling not very easily distinguished from a sense of guilt. It seemed that there must be something almost wicked in his failure to be afield with his team in the early spring mornings when the woolly anemones appeared in their fur coats, the heralds of the later comers – violets, sweet-williams, puccoons, and the scarlet prairie lilies.

A moral crisis accompanies the passing of a man from the struggle with the soil to any occupation, the productiveness of which is not quite so clear. It requires a keenly sensitive nature to feel conscious of it, but Jim Irwin possessed such a temperament; and from the beginning of the daily race with the seasons, which makes the life of a northern farmer an eight months’ Marathon in which to fall behind for a week is to lose much of the year’s reward, the gawky schoolmaster slept uneasily, and heard the earliest cock-crow as a soldier hears a call to arms to which he has made up his mind he will not respond.

I think there is a real moral principle involved. I believe that this deep instinct for labor in and about the soil is a valid one, and that the gathering together of people in cities has been at the cost of an obscure but actual moral shock.

I doubt if the people of the cities can ever be at rest in a future full of moral searchings of conscience until every man has traced definitely the connection of the work he is doing with the maintenance of his country’s population. Sometimes those vocations whose connection can not be so traced will be recognized as wicked ones, and people engaged in them will feel as did Jim – until he worked out the facts in the relation of school-teaching to the feeding, clothing and sheltering of the world. Most school-teaching he believed – correctly or incorrectly – has very little to do with the primary task of the human race; but as far as his teaching was concerned, even he believed in it. If by teaching school he could not make a greater contribution to the productiveness of the Woodruff District than by working in the fields, he would go back to the fields. Whether he could make his teaching thus productive or not was the very fact in issue between him and the local body politic.

These are some of the waters that ran under the bridges before the Fourth of July picnic at Eight-Mile Grove. Few surface indications there were of any change in the little community in this annual gathering of friends and neighbors. Wilbur Smythe made the annual address, and was in rather finer fettle than usual as he paid his fervid tribute to the starry flag, and to this very place as the most favored spot in the best country of the greatest state in the most powerful, intellectual, freest and most progressive nation in the best possible of worlds. Wilbur was going strong. Jim Irwin read the Declaration rather well, Jennie Woodruff thought, as she sat on the platform between Deacon Avery, the oldest settler in the district, and Mrs. Columbus Brown, the sole local representative of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Colonel Woodruff presided in his Grand Army of the Republic uniform.

The fresh northwest breeze made free with the oaks, elms, hickories and box-elders of Eight-Mile Grove, and the waters of Pickerel Creek glimmered a hundred yards away, beyond the flitting figures of the boys who preferred to shoot off their own fire-crackers and torpedoes and nigger-chasers, rather than to listen to those of Wilbur Smythe. Still farther off could be heard the voice of a lone lemonade vender as he advertised ice-cold lemonade, made in the shade, with a brand-new spade, by an old maid, as a guaranty that it was the blamedest, coldest lemonade ever sold. And under the shadiest trees a few incorrigible Marthas were spreading the snowy tablecloths on which would soon be placed the bountiful repasts stored in ponderous wicker baskets and hampers. It was a lovely day, in a lovely spot – a good example of the miniature forests which grew naturally from time immemorial in favored locations on the Iowa prairies – half a square mile of woodland, all about which the green corn-rows stood aslant in the cool breeze, “waist-high and laid by.”

They were passing down the rough board steps from the platform after the exercises had terminated in a rousing rendition of America, when Jennie Woodruff, having slipped by everybody else to reach him, tapped Jim Irwin on the arm. He looked back at her over his shoulder with his slow gentle smile.

“Isn’t your mother here, Jim?” she asked. “I’ve been looking all over the crowd and can’t see her.”

“She isn’t here,” answered Jim. “I was in hopes that when she broke loose and went to your Christmas dinner she would stay loose – but she went home and settled back into her rut.”

“Too bad,” said Jennie. “She’d have had a nice time if she had come.”

“Yes,” said Jim, “I believe she would.”

“I want help,” said Jennie. “Our hamper is terribly heavy. Please!”

It was rather obvious to Mrs. Bonner that Jennie was throwing herself at Jim’s head; but that was an article of the Bonner family creed since the decision which closed the hearing at the court-house. It must be admitted that the young county superintendent found tasks which kept the schoolmaster very close to her side. He carried the hamper, helped Jennie to spread the cloth on the grass, went with her to the well for water and cracked ice wherewith to cool it. In fact, he quite cut Wilbur Smythe out when that gentleman made ponderous efforts to obtain a share of the favor implied in these permissions.

“Sit down, Jim,” said Mrs. Woodruff, “you’ve earned a bite of what we’ve got. It’s good enough, what there is of it, and there’s enough of it, such as it is!”

“I’m sorry,” said Jim, “but I’ve a prior engagement.”

“Why, Jim!” protested Jennie. “I’ve been counting on you. Don’t desert me!”

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Jim, “but I promised. I’ll see you later.”

One might have thought, judging by the colonel’s quizzical smile, that he was pleased at Jennie’s loss of her former swain.

“We’ll have to invite Jim longer ahead of time,” said he. “He’s getting to be in demand.”

He seemed to be in demand – a fact that Jennie confirmed by observation as she chatted with Deacon Avery, Mrs. Columbus Brown and her husband, and the Orator of the Day, at the table set apart for the guests and notables. Jim received a dozen invitations as he passed the groups seated on the grass – one of them from Mrs. Cornelius Bonner, who saw no particular point in advertising disgruntlement. The children ran to him and clung to his hands; young girls gave him sisterly smiles and such trifles as chicken drumsticks, pieces of cake and like tidbits. His passage to the numerous groups at a square table under a big burr-oak was quite an ovation – an ovation of the significance of which he was himself quite unaware. The people were just friendly, that was all – to his mind.

But Jennie – the daughter of a politician and a promising one herself – Jennie sensed the fact that Jim Irwin had won something from the people of the Woodruff District in the way of deference. Still he was the gangling, Lincolnian, ill-dressed, poverty-stricken Jim Irwin of old, but Jennie had no longer the feeling that one’s standing was somewhat compromised by association with him. He had begun to put on something more significant than clothes, something which he had possessed all the time, but which became valid only as it was publicly apprehended. There was a slight air of command in his down-sitting and up-rising at the picnic. He was clearly the central figure of his group, in which she recognized the Bronsons, those queer children from Tennessee, the Simmses, the Talcotts, the Hansens, the Hamms and Colonel Woodruff’s hired man, Pete, whose other name is not recorded.

Jim sat down between Bettina Hansen, a flaxen-haired young Brunhilde of seventeen, and Calista Simms – Jennie saw him do it, while listening to Wilbur Smythe’s account of the exacting nature of the big law practise he was building up, – and would have been glad to exchange places with Calista or Bettina.

The repast drew to a close; and over by the burr-oak the crowd had grown to a circle surrounding Jim Irwin.

“He seems to be making an address,” said Wilbur Smythe.

“Well, Wilbur,” replied the colonel, “you had the first shot at us. Suppose we move over and see what’s under discussion.”

As they approached the group, they heard Jim Irwin answering something which Ezra Bronson had said.

“You think so, Ezra,” said he, “and it seems reasonable that big creameries like those at Omaha, Sioux City, Des Moines and the other centralizer points can make butter cheaper than we would do here – but we’ve the figures that show that they aren’t economical.”

“They can’t make good butter, for one thing,” said Newton Bronson cockily.

“Why can’t they?” asked Olaf Hansen, the father of Bettina.

“Well,” said Newton, “they have to have so much cream that they’ve got to ship it so far that it gets rotten on the way, and they have to renovate it with lime and other ingredients before they can churn it.”

“Well,” said Raymond Simms, “I reckon they sell their butter fo’ all it’s wuth; an’ they cain’t get within from foah to seven cents a pound as much fo’ it as the farmers’ creameries in Wisconsin and Minnesota get fo’ theirs.”

“That’s a fact, Olaf,” said Jim.

“How do you kids know so darned much about it?” queried Pete.

“Huh!” sniffed Bettina. “We’ve been reading about it, and writing letters about it, and figuring percentages on it in school all winter. We’ve done arithmetic and geography and grammar and I don’t know what else on it.”

“Well, I’m agin’ any schoolin’,” said Pete, “that makes kids smarter in farmin’ than their parents and their parents’ hired men. Gi’ me another swig o’ that lemonade, Jim!”

“You see,” said Jim to his audience, meanwhile pouring the lemonade, “the centralizer creamery is uneconomic in several ways. It has to pay excessive transportation charges. It has to pay excessive commissions to its cream buyers. It has to accept cream without proper inspection, and mixes the good with the bad. It makes such long shipments that the cream spoils in transit and lowers the quality of the butter. It can’t make the best use of the buttermilk. All these losses and leaks the farmers have to stand. I can prove – and so can the six or eight pupils in the Woodruff school who have been working on the cream question this winter – that we could make at least six cents a pound on our butter if we had a cooperative creamery and all sent our cream to it.”

“Well,” said Ezra Bronson, “let’s start one.”

“I’ll go in,” said Olaf Hansen.

“Me, too,” said Con Bonner.

There was a general chorus of assent. Jim had convinced his audience.

“He’s got the jury,” said Wilbur Smythe to Colonel Woodruff.

“Yes,” said the colonel, “and right here is where he runs into danger. Can he handle the crowd when it’s with him?”

“Well,” said Jim, “I think we ought to organize one, but I’ve another proposition first. Let’s get together and pool our cream. By that, I mean that we’ll all sell to the same creamery, and get the best we can out of the centralizers by the cooperative method. We can save two cents a pound in that way, and we’ll learn to cooperate. When we have found just how well we can hang together, we’ll be able to take up the cooperative creamery, with less danger of falling apart and failing.”

“Who’ll handle the pool?” inquired Mr. Hansen.

“We’ll handle it in the school,” answered Jim.

“School’s about done,” objected Mr. Bronson.

“Won’t the cream pool pretty near pay the expenses of running the school all summer?” asked Bonner.

“We ought to run the school plant all the time,” said Jim. “It’s the only way to get full value out of the investment. And we’ve corn-club work, pig-club work, poultry work and canning-club work which make it very desirable to keep in session with only a week’s vacation. If you’ll add the cream pool, it will make the school the hardest working crowd in the district and doing actual farm work, too. I like Mr. Bonner’s suggestion.”

“Well,” said Haakon Peterson, who had joined the group, “Ay tank we better have a meeting of the board and discuss it.”

“Well, darn it,” said Columbus Brown, “I want in on this cream pool – and I live outside the district!”

“We’ll let you in, Clumb,” said the colonel.

“Sure!” said Pete. “We hain’t no more sense than to let any one in, Clumb. Come in, the water’s fine. We ain’t proud!”

“Well,” said Clumb, “if this feller is goin’ to do school work of this kind, I want in the district, too.”

“We’ll come to that one of these days,” said Jim. “The district is too small.”

Wilbur Smythe’s car stopped at the distant gate and honked for him – a signal which broke up the party. Haakon Peterson passed the word to the colonel and Mr. Bronson for a board meeting the next evening. The picnic broke up in a dispersion of staid married couples to their homes, and young folks in top buggies to dances and displays of fireworks in the surrounding villages. Jim walked across the fields to his home – neither old nor young, having neither sweetheart with whom to dance nor farm to demand labor in its inexorable chores. He turned after crawling through a wire fence and looked longingly at Jennie as she was suavely assisted into the car by the frock-coated lawyer.

“You saw what he did?” said the colonel interrogatively, as he and his daughter sat on the Woodruff veranda that evening. “Who taught him the supreme wisdom of holding back his troops when they grew too wild for attack?”

“He may lose them,” said Jennie.

“Not so,” said the colonel. “Individuals of the Brown Mouse type always succeed when they find their environment. And I believe Jim has found his.”

“Well,” said Jennie, “I wish his environment would find him some clothes. It’s a shame the way he has to go looking. He’d be nice-appearing if he was dressed anyway.”

“Would he?” queried the colonel. “I wonder, now! Well, Jennie, as his oldest friend having any knowledge of clothes, I think it’s up to you to act as a committee of one on Jim’s apparel.”

CHAPTER XVII
A TROUBLE SHOOTER

A sudden July storm had drenched the fields and filled the swales with water. The cultivators left the corn-fields until the next day’s sun and a night of seepage might once more fit the black soil for tillage. The little boys rolled up their trousers and tramped home from school with the rich mud squeezing up between their toes, thrilling with the electricity of clean-washed nature, and the little girls rather wished they could go barefooted, too, as, indeed, some of the more sensible did.

A lithe young man with climbers on his legs walked up a telephone pole by the roadside to make some repairs to the wires, which had been whipped into a “cross” by the wind of the storm and the lashing of the limbs of the roadside trees. He had tied his horse to a post up the road, and was running out the trouble on the line, which was plentifully in evidence just then. Wind and lightning had played hob with the system, and the line repairer was cheerfully profane, in the manner of his sort, glad by reason of the fire of summer in his veins, and incensed at the forces of nature which had brought him out through the mud to the Woodruff District to do these piffling jobs that any of the subscribers ought to have known how to do themselves, and none of which took more than a few minutes of his time when he reached the seat of the difficulty.

Jim Irwin, his school out for the day, came along the muddy road with two of his pupils, a bare-legged little boy and a tall girl with flaxen hair – Bettina Hansen and her small brother Hans, who refused to answer to any name other than Hans Nilsen. His father’s name was Nils Hansen, and Hans, a born conservative, being the son of Nils, regarded himself as rightfully a Nilsen, and disliked the “Hans Hansen” on the school register. Thus do European customs sometimes survive among us.

Hans strode through the pool of water which the shower had spread completely over the low turnpike a few rods from the pole on which the trouble shooter was at work, and the electrician ceased his labors and rested himself on a cross-arm while he waited to see what the flaxen-haired girl would do when she came to it.

Jim and Bettina stopped at the water’s edge. “Oh!” cried she, “I can’t get through!” The trouble shooter felt the impulse to offer his aid, but thought it best on the whole, to leave the matter in the hands of the lank schoolmaster.

“I’ll carry you across,” said Jim.

“I’m too heavy,” answered Bettina.

“Nonsense!” said Jim.

“She’s awful heavy,” piped Hans. “Better take off your shoes, anyhow!”

Jim thought of the welfare of his only good trousers, and saw that Hans’ suggestion was good; but a mental picture of himself with shoes in hand and bare legs restrained him. He took Bettina in his arms and went slowly across, walking rather farther with his blushing burden than was strictly necessary. Bettina was undoubtedly heavy; but she was also wonderfully pleasant to feel in arms which had never borne such a burden before; and her arms about his neck as he slopped through the pond were curiously thrilling. Her cheek brushed his as he set her upon her feet and felt, rather than thought, that if there had only been a good reason for it, Bettina would have willingly been carried much farther.

“How strong you are!” she panted. “I’m awful heavy, ain’t I?”

“Not very,” said Jim, with scholastic accuracy. “You’re just right. I – I mean, you’re simply well-nourished and wholesomely plump!”

Bettina blushed still more rosily.

“You’ve ruined your clothes,” said she. “Now you’ll have to come home with me and let me – see who’s there!”

Jim looked up at the trouble shooter, and went over to the foot of the pole. The man walked down, striking his spurs deep into the wood for safety.

“Hello!” said he. “School out?”

“For the day,” said Jim. “Any important work on the telephone line now?”

“Just trouble-shooting,” was the answer. “I have to spend three hours hunting these troubles, to one in fixing ’em up.”

“Do they take much technical skill?” asked Jim.

“Mostly shakin’ out crosses, and puttin’ in new carbons in the arresters,” replied the trouble man. “Any one ought to do any of ’em with five minutes’ instruction. But these farmers – they’d rather have me drive ten miles to take a hair-pin from across the binding-posts than to do it themselves. That’s the way they are!”

“Will you be out here to-morrow?” queried the teacher.

“Sure!”

“I’d like to have you show my class in manual training something about the telephone,” said Jim. “The reason we can’t fix our own troubles, if they are as simple as you say, is because we don’t know how simple they are.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Professor,” said the trouble man. “I’ll bring a phone with me and give ’em a lecture. I don’t see how I can employ the company’s time any better than in beating a little telephone sense into the heads of the community. Set the time, and I’ll be there with bells.”

Bettina and her teacher walked on up the shady lane, feeling that they had a secret. They were very nearly on a parity as to the innocence of soul with which they held this secret, except that Bettina was much more single-minded toward it than Jim. To her he had been gradually attaining the status of a hero whose clasp of her in that iron-armed way was mysteriously blissful – and beyond that her mind had not gone. To Jim, Bettina represented in a very sweet way the disturbing influences which had recently risen to the threshold of consciousness in his being, and which were concretely but not very hopefully embodied in Jennie Woodruff.

Thus interested in each other, they turned the corner which took them out of sight of the lineman, and stopped at the shady avenue leading up to Nils Hansen’s farmstead. Little Hans Nilsen had disappeared by the simple method of cutting across lots. Bettina’s girlish instinct called for something more than the casual good-by which would have sufficed yesterday. She lingered, standing close by Jim Irwin.

“Won’t you come in and let me clean the mud off you,” she asked, “and give you some dry socks?”

“Oh, no!” replied Jim. “It’s almost as far to your house as it is home. Thank you, no.”

“There’s a splash of mud on your face,” said Bettina. “Let me – ” And with her little handkerchief she began wiping off the mud. Jim stooped to permit the attention, but not much, for Bettina was of the mold of women of whom warriors are born – their faces approached, and Jim recognized a crisis in the fact that Bettina’s mouth was presented for a kiss. Jim met the occasion like the gentleman he was. He did not leave her stung by rejection; neither did he obey the impulse to respond to the invitation according to his man’s instinct; he took the rosy face between his palms and kissed her forehead – and left her in possession of her self-respect. After that Bettina Hansen felt, somehow, that the world could not possibly contain another man like Jim Irwin – a conviction which she still cherishes when that respectful caress has been swept into the cloudy distance of a woman’s memories.

Pete, Colonel Woodruff’s hired man, was watering the horses at the trough when the trouble shooter reached the Woodruff telephone. County Superintendent Jennie had run for her father’s home in her little motor-car in the face of the shower, and was now on the bench where once she had said “Humph!” to Jim Irwin – and thereby started in motion the factors in this story.

“Anything wrong with your phone?” asked the trouble man of Pete.

“Nah,” replied Pete. “It was on the blink till you done something down the road.”

“Crossed up,” said the lineman. “These trees along here are something fierce.”

“I’d cut ’em all if they was mine,” said Pete, “but the colonel set ’em out, along about sixty-six, and I reckon they’ll have to go on a-growin’.”

“Who’s your school-teacher?” asked the telephone man.

The county superintendent pricked up her ears – being quite properly interested in matters educational.

“Feller name of Irwin,” said Pete.

“Not much of a looker,” said the trouble shooter.

“Nater of the sile,” said Pete. “He an’ I both worked in it together till it roughened up our complexions.”

“Farmer, eh?” said the lineman interrogatively. “Well, he’s the first farmer I ever saw in my life that recognized there’s education in the telephone business. I’m goin’ to teach a class in telephony at the schoolhouse to-morrow.”

“Don’t get swelled up,” said Pete. “He has everybody tell them young ones about everything – blacksmith, cabinet-maker, pie-founder, cookie-cooper, dressmaker – even down to telephones. He’ll have them scholars figurin’ on telephones, and writin’ compositions on ’em, and learnin’ ’lectricity from ’em an’ things like that”

“He must be some feller,” said the lineman. “And who’s his star pupil?”

“Didn’t know he had one,” said Pete. “Why?”

“Girl,” said the trouble-shooter. “Goes to school from the farm where the Western Union brace is used at the road.”

“Nils Hansen’s girl?” asked Pete.

“Toppy little filly,” said the lineman, “with silver mane – looks like she’d pull a good load and step some.”

“M’h’m,” grunted Pete. “Bettina Hansen. Looks well enough. What about her?”

Again the county superintendent, seated on the bench, pricked up her ears that she might learn, mayhap, something of educational interest.

“I never wanted to be a school-teacher as bad,” continued the shooter of trouble, “as I did when this farmer got to the low place in the road with the fair Bettina this afternoon when they was comin’ home from school. The water was all over the road – ”

“Then I win a smoke from the roadmaster,” said Pete. “I bet him it would overflow.”

“Well, if I was in the professor’s place, I’d be glad to pay the bet,” said the worldly lineman. “And I’ll say this for him, he rose equal to the emergency and caved the emergency’s head in. He carried her across the pond, and her a-clingin’ to his neck in a way to make your mouth water. She wasn’t a bit mad about it, either.”

“I’d rather have a good cigar any ol’ time,” said Pete. “Nothin’ but a yaller-haired kid – an’ a Dane at that. I had a dame once up at Spirit Lake – ”

“Well, I must be drivin’ on,” said the lineman. “Got to get up a lecture for Professor Irwin to-morrow – and maybe I’ll be able to meet that yaller-haired kid. So long!”

The county superintendent recognized at once the educational importance of the matter, when one of her country teachers adopted the policy of calling in everybody available who could teach the pupils anything special, and converting the school into a local Chautauqua served by local lecturers. She made a run of ten miles to hear the trouble shooter’s lecture. She saw the boys and some of the girls give an explanation of the telephone and the use of it. She heard the teacher give as a language exercise the next day an essay on the ethics and proprieties of eavesdropping on party lines; and she saw the beginning of an arrangement under which the boys of the Woodruff school took the contract to look after easily-remedied line troubles in the neighborhood on the basis which paid for a telephone for the school, and swelled slightly the fund which Jim was accumulating for general purposes. Incidentally, she saw how really educational was the work of the day, and that to which it led.

She had no curiosity to which she would have confessed, about the relations between Jim Irwin and his “star pupil,” that young Brunhilde – Bettina Hansen; but her official duty required her to observe the attitude of pupils to teachers – Bettina among them. Clearly, Jim was looked upon by the girls, large and small, as a possession of theirs. They competed for the task of keeping his desk in order, and of dusting and tidying up the schoolroom. There was something of exaltation of sentiment in this. Bettina’s eyes followed him about the room in a devotional sort of way; but so, too, did those of the ten-year-olds. He was loved, that was clear, by Bettina, Calista Simms and all the rest – an excellent thing in a school.

All the same, Jennie met Jim rather oftener after the curious conversation between those rather low fellows, Pete and the trouble shooter. As autumn approached, and the time came for Jim to begin to think of his trip to Ames, Colonel Woodruff’s hint that she should assume charge of the problem of Jim’s clothes for the occasion, came more and more often to her mind. Would Jim be able to buy suitable clothes? Would he understand that he ought not to appear in the costume which was tolerable in the Woodruff District only because the people there were accustomed to seeing him dressed like a tramp? Could she approach the subject with any degree of safety? Really these were delicate questions; and considering the fact that Jennie had quite dismissed her old sweetheart from the list of eligibles – had never actually admitted him to it, in fact – they assumed great importance to her mind. Once, only a little more than a year ago, she had scoffed at Jim’s mention of the fact that he might think of marrying; and now she could not think of saying to him kindly, “Jim, you really must have some better clothes to wear when you go to Ames!” It would have been far easier last summer.

Somehow, Jim had been acquiring dignity and unapproachability. She must sidle up to the subject. She did. She took him into her runabout one day as he was striding toward town in that plowed-ground manner of his, and gave him a spin over to the fair grounds and two or three times around the half-mile track.

“I’m going to Ames to hear your speech,” said she.

“I’m glad of that,” said Jim. “More of the farmers are going from this neighborhood than ever before. I’ll feel at home, if they all sit together where I can talk at them.”

“Who’s going?” asked Jennie.

“The Bronsons, Con Bonner and Nils Hansen and Bettina,” replied Jim. “That’s all from our district – and Columbus Brown and probably others from near-by localities.”

“I shall have to have some clothes,” said Jennie.

Jim failed to respond to this, as clearly out of his field. They were passing the county fair buildings, and he began expatiating on the kind of county fair he would have – a great county exposition with the schools as its central thought – a clearing house for the rural activities of all the country schools.

“And pa’s going to have a suit before we go, too,” said Jennie. “Here are some samples I got of Atkins, the tailor. Which would be the most becoming do you think?”

Jim looked the samples over carefully, but had little to say as to their adaptation to Colonel Woodruff’s sartorial needs. Jennie laid great stress on the excellent quality of one or two samples, and carefully specified the prices of them. Jim exhibited no more than a languid and polite interest, and gave not the slightest symptom of ever having considered even remotely the contingency of having a tailor-made suit. Jennie sidled closer to the subject.

“I should think it would be awfully hard for you to get fitted in the stores,” said she, “you are so very tall.”

“It would be,” said Jim, “if I had ever considered the matter of looks very much. I guess I’m not constructed on any plan the clothing manufacturers have regarded as even remotely possible. How about this county fair idea? Couldn’t we do this next fall? You organize the teachers – ”

Jennie advanced the spark, cut out the muffler and drowned the rest of Jim’s remarks in wind and dust.