"Mysteries!" shouted Bill. "Why, everybody in Bloomtown, including Isabel, knows that Jap is fairly sapheaded about her."
"Well, what's hampering him?" inquired Tom. "Why don't he confide in me?"
"Confide your hat!" remarked Bill crisply. "Isabel will die of old age before Jap asks her. You see, he is such a durn fool that he thinks he isn't good enough for her. When the Lord made Jap Herron He made a man, I tell you!"
"Who said He didn't?" stormed Tom. "I can't know what is in the boy's mind, can I? What do you want me to do, kidnap him and get his consent? Bill, you're a fool. You needn't tell me that Jap Herron is such a mealy-mouth."
"All I know is that he won't ask Isabel," Bill said gloomily. "I'd like to get married myself, but as long as Jap stays single, I stick too." And thinking of Rosy's blue eyes, he sighed heavily.
"It beats me, the way young folks do. It was different when I went courting," Tom muttered, turning to go.
At the door he met Kelly Jones, who had come in to inquire what Jap intended to do about the "licker" business. He was too busy with his fall plowing to be running over to Barton for his jug of good cheer, and he didn't like the brand he could get at Bingham's drug store, on Doc Connor's prescription. While he was still holding forth, Jap came in, with half-a-dozen constituents, all busy with the same problem. Bill took up his notebook and wandered out. At Blanke's drug store he met Isabel. She motioned for him to come back in the store.
"What do you want to know, Iz?" he asked with the familiarity born of long years of propinquity. "Reckon you want to ask what everybody else wants to know—when is Jap going to get a saloon?"
"You are too smart, Bill Bowers," she retorted, with annoyance. She had had a subject of more personal nature on the tip of her tongue. "I think that Jap will be able to answer his own questions without any help from you."
"It is to be hoped that he will make a better stagger at answering than he does at asking," remarked Bill shortly.