“Gracious! I thought everybody in this country knowed her. She’s an alfalfa widow.”

“Well, I seem to have somehow missed her.”

“She went down to town the other day. Pity you’ve missed her. Awful good-looker.”

“Well, I’ll try to meet her.”

“Her and Jimsy used to meet a whole heap,” said Scipio.

“Oh!” said I. “H’m! All the same May’s a fool.”

“Did she get mad? Did she get mad?” demanded Scipio, vivaciously.

“Lord!” said I, thinking of it. I told Scipio how Jimsy had talked over the fence to the scarlet fragment of his past for perhaps three minutes in the safe presence of a wagonload of witnesses, and how in consequence May had gone up into the air. “To love acceptably needs tact,” I moralized; but while I expatiated on this, Scipio’s attention wandered.

“You saw Honey Wiggin go up the river with his dudes?”

“Oh, yes.”