"Where's ol' pap? Didn't he—"
"Why, Flaxen, don't ye know me?" he cried out at her elbow.
She knew his voice, but his shaven face, so much more youthful, was so strange that she knew him only by his eyes laughing down into hers. Nevertheless she kissed him doubtfully.
"Oh, what've you done? You've shaved off your whiskers; you don't look a bit natural. I—"
She was embarrassed, almost frightened, at the change in him. He "looked so queer"; his fair, untroubled, smiling face and blond moustache made him look younger than Bert.
"Nev' mind that! She'll grow again if y' like it better. Get int' this new buggy—it's ours. They ain't no flies on us to-day; not many," said Ans in high glee, elaborately assisting her to the carriage, not appreciating the full meaning of the situation.
As they rode home he was extravagantly gay. He sat beside her, and she drove, wild with delight at the prairie, the wheat, the gulls, everything.
"Ain't no dust on our clo'es," said Ans, coughing, winking at Bert, and brushing off with an elaborately finical gesture an imaginary fleck from his knee and elbow. "Ain't we togged out? I guess nobody said 'boo' to us down to St. Peter, eh?"
"You like my clo'es?" said Flaxen, with charming directness.
"You bet! They're scrumptious."