"Ah reckon," agreed Lancaster. He sat down beside the younger man, eyeing him closely. "How d' y' come t' git away fr'm business?" he queried.
"Well, you see," Lounsbury answered, "I've got an A 1 man in my Bismarck store, and at Clark's there's nothing to do week days, hardly. So I just took some tobacco to Skinney's, where the boys could get at it, and loped down here." Then, playfully, "But I don't see much happening in these parts." He stretched toward a window. "The town of Lancaster ain't growing very fast."
Dallas, seated on a bench with Marylyn, looked across at him smilingly. "I'm glad of it," she declared. "We ain't used to towns."
"You folks've never lived in one?"
"No—we never even been in one."
He puckered his forehead. "Funny," he said. "Somehow, I always think of you two as town girls."
"Aw, shucks!" exclaimed Lancaster, scowling.
But Dallas was leaning forward, interested. "That's on account of our teachers," she said. "There was a school-house up the track, in Texas, and we went to it on the hand-car. Every year we had a different teacher, and all of 'em came from big Eastern places like New Orleans or St. Louis. So—so you see, we kinda got towny from our school-ma'ams."
"One had a gold tooth," put in Marylyn. Her eyes, wide with recollection, were fixed upon Lounsbury.
"But you passed through cities coming north," argued the storekeeper.