"What's the use?" growled Alf. "Wouldn't last fer twenty-three years, would it?"
"Well, you talk mighty queer," said the marshal, unconvinced. He couldn't imagine such a thing as a strictly sober man telling him to go to grass. He was the most important man in Tinkletown.
Further discussion was prevented by the approach of Mr. Crow's daughter, Susie, accompanied by a tall, pink-faced young man in a resplendent checked suit and a dazzling red necktie. They came from Brubaker's popular drugstore and ice-cream "parlour," two doors below.
"Hello, Pop," said Susie gaily, as the couple sauntered past their half-halting seniors.
"H'are you, Mr. Crow?" was the young man's greeting, uttered with the convulsive earnestness of sudden embarrassment. "Fine day, ain't it?"
Mr. Crow said that it was, and then both he and Alf stopped short in their tracks and gazed intently at the backs of the young people. Even as they stared, a fiery redness enveloped the ears of Susie's companion. A few steps farther on he turned his head and looked back. Something that may be described as sheepish defiance marked that swift, involuntary glance.
Mr. Reesling broke the silence. There was a worried, sympathetic note in his voice.
"Got on his Sunday clothes, Anderson, and this is only Wednesday. Beats the Dutch, don't it?"
"I wonder—" began Mr. Crow, and then closed his lips so tightly and so abruptly that his sparse chin whiskers stuck out almost horizontally.
He started off briskly in the wake of the young people. Alf, forgetting his own apprehensions in the face of this visible manifestation, shuffled along a few paces behind.