Jap and Bill noted that Ellis found frequent business in Barton, and despite the inhospitable atmosphere of the substantial Bowers home, across the little park from the Herald office, Flossy came oftener than usual to her girlhood town. The autumn, the winter and the spring sped by. Ellis Hinton was too happy to scold, even when there was an excess of horse-play. In the gladsome June-tide the young girls of Bloomtown stripped their mothers' gardens to weave garlands for the little church, and Judge Bowers opened his heart and his house for the wedding reception.
Flossy had a dower of two thousand dollars, besides the cottage, a part of her father's patrimony, on one of the side streets, a ten-minute walk from the office. In her trunk were stowed away the yellow linens that should have served her, had a certain college friend proved faithful, and the wedding presents came near to doing the rest. This strange turn of the wheel of fortune landed Jap Herron in his first real home. Flossy could cook, and thank the kind fates, she brought something to cook with her. Flossy was a misnomer, for even in her salad days, she had never been the least bit "flossy," and when Ellis bestowed himself upon her she had well turned thirty.
The Judge made Ellis a present of the office, thereby relieving him of the haunting fear that he might, at some time, demand the rent. The paper put on a new dress, and the hell-box was dumped full of the discarded, mutilated types that had so long given strabismus to the patient readers of the Bloomtown Herald.
CHAPTER IV
"To-morrow is Jap's birthday," announced Ellis, one noontide early in July. "Jap, you are a joy-spoiler. With the Fourth yet smoking in the air, we must be upset by your birthday."
"Dad allus cussed that day," remarked Jap, wiping the blackberry juice from his freckled face. "Gee, I never guessed that there was such grub as this," regretfully gazing at the generous blackberry cobbler—regretfully, because his exhausted stomach refused to give another stitch.
"Cussed it?" queried Ellis, who was beginning to fat up a bit.
"He said that I was the first nail in the coffin of his troubles," replied Jap cheerfully.
"How dreadfully inhuman," exclaimed Flossy, scraping the scraps to the chickens. "Well, Jappie," she bustled back to the dining-room where her little family lingered, "we are going to begin making your birthdays pleasant. What do you want most?"