"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 more he thought on the same subject, and quite as foolishly.
Because of much thinking on the subject, when he and Dill rode down the trail which much recent passing had made unusually dusty, with the hot sunlight of the Fourth making the air quiver palpably around them; with the cloudless blue arching hotly over their heads and with the four by six cotton flag flying an involuntary signal of distress—on account of its being hastily raised bottom-side-up and left that way—and beckoning them from the little clump of shade below, the heart of Charming Billy Boyle beat unsteadily under the left pocket of his soft, cream-colored silk shirt, and the cheeks of him glowed red under the coppery tan. Dill was not the sort of man who loves fast riding and they ambled along quite decorously—"like we was headed for prayer-meeting with a singing-book under each elbow," thought Billy, secretly resentful of the pace.
"I reckon there'll be quite a crowd," he remarked wistfully. "I see a good many horses staked out already."
Dill nodded absently, and Billy took to singing his pet ditty; one must do something when one is covering the last mile of a journey toward a place full of all sorts of delightful possibilities—and covering that mile at a shambling trot which is truly maddening.
"She can make a punkin pie quick's a cat can wink her eye,