Well, her face went the color of a sunset an' she slammed the door. "If I was your Dad," sez I to myself, "you'd go back to those buckskins to-morrow." I waited a moment an' then I began to make fun of her, and after a while she came out with her teeth set tight together an' we went down to the dinin' room; but it was the first time I had ever seen her take an awkward step.
"Now that's what I call a sensible garment," sez Jabez, heartily, an' then he begun talkin' to me. Jabez had a lot o' wisdom when he kept his head, an' by the time supper was over Barbie was purty well used to the feel, an' we all three went for a ride; me ridin' Starlight, Barbie, Hawkins, an' Jabez a strappin' bay, one of Pluto's colts, an' a beauty. Well, I'll never forget that ride: you know how tobacco tastes after a man owns up that he was only jokin' when he swore off; you know how liquor seems to ooz all through you after you've been out in the alkali for three months—well, that first ride, after bein' out o' commission for two years, makes these two sensations something like the affection a man has for sour-dough bread. Oh, it was glorious! we all felt like a flock o' birds—hosses an' all. In the first place it was spring, an' that was excuse enough if the' hadn't been any other; but two of us had gone into that day not on speakin' terms, an' now they were closer than ever, an' the third one had brought 'em together. The old sayin' is that three's a crowd, but it took a crowd to hold all the joyfulness that we was luggin' that night, an' it was ten o'clock before we turned around on the velvet carpet an' came swingin' back to the house.
We had to finish with a little race, an' I was rejoiced to see that old Starlight hadn't become a back number, even though the bay colt did make it a mighty close finish.
As soon as we unsaddled, Barbie sort o' whispered to me, "I 'm awful glad you came back, Happy"; an' then she ran into the house.
Jabez shook hands an' sez, "It seems to me, Happy, that I've been waitin' for you for months. I hope to goodness you don't fly up any more."
"I ain't goin' to look for trouble, Jabez," sez I. "This spot is the most homelike to me of any on earth; but I don't believe I'll turn in yet. I want to stroll around a little."
I walked off in the quiet to the little mound where Monody lay, an' I sat there a long while, thinkin' o' the last time I'd come back. The night was unusual warm, an' I hunted up all the stars that I knew, an' watched 'em as they dropped down one by one behind the mountains. I thought of all that Friar Tuck had said about the origin of life, an' what a nerve a child like Barbie had to even study on such a subject. Then I dropped back to all the happiness I'd had that day, an' the last thing I knew I was lookin' into Barbie's eyes an' wonderin' what made her face so pink. It was the cold, gray dawn-wind that woke me up.