"Will you be one of my pupils, if I have the good fortune to get the school, Miss Day?"
"I—I am afraid not. I do not really belong in Poketown," Janice explained. "And the ungraded school could not aid me much."
"No, I suppose not," returned the young man. "Well! I hope I see you again, Miss Day."
Walky clucked to the horses and they jogged on, leaving Nelson Haley to finish his repairs. Walky chuckled, and said to Janice:
"He's quite a flip young feller. He is young to tackle the Poketown school. An' 'twill be an objection, I shouldn't wonder. Ye see, they couldn't find that fault with 'Rill Scattergood."
"But I venture to say that they did when she first came to Poketown to teach," cried Janice.
"Oh, say! I sh'd say they did," agreed Walky, with a retrospective rolling of his head. "An' she was a purty young gal, then, too. There was more on us than Hopewell Drugg arter 'Rill in them days—yes, sir-ree!"
Janice was curious, and she yielded to the temptation of asking the town gossip a question:
"Why—why didn't Miss 'Rill marry Hopewell, then?"
"The goodness only knows why they fell out, Miss Janice," declared Walky. "We none of us ever made out. I 'spect it was the old woman done it—ol' Miz' Scattergood. She didn't take kindly to Hopewell. And then—Well, 'Cinda Stone was lef all alone, an' she lived right back o' Drugg's store, an' her father had owed Drugg a power of money 'fore he died—a big store bill, ye see. Hopewell Drugg is as soft as butter; mebbe he loved 'Cinda Stone; anyhow he merried her after he'd got the mitten from Amarilla. Huh! ye can't never tell the whys and wherefores of sech things—not re'lly."