"J. W."
CHAPTER X
LFRED HENLEY was coming home. Jim Cahews announced it one morning to a cluster of farmers and chronic loungers at the store, and the news rapidly spread through the village and country-side, and various comments were made. He was going to do a man's part and try to put up with the cranky woman he had married, said the men. He was heartily ashamed of himself, said the women. He had got over his silly pout and was coming home to make amends for his conduct in living so long away from a woman who had shown such beautiful constancy to her first and, perhaps—as it looked now—only love.
Dixie Hart heard the report on her way to the post-office, and, needing a spool of cotton, she went into the store.
"Yes, he's headed this way," was Cahews's confirmation of the news. "The truth is, Miss Dixie, if I'm any judge of a man's letters, Alf's actually homesick. He wants the mountains he was fetched up in. He writes about his lonely days and nights, when his speculations don't keep him busy, an' says they don't have anything out thar but pesky north winds an' sand-storms. He might have stayed away longer, as it was, but one little thing I wrote him turned the scale. You know that measly ten-cent circus that was to show here last month got stranded. The performers all quit and footed it home, an' the sheriff levied on the thing, lock, stock, and barrel, an' is to sell it piece by piece at public outcry Saturday week. Alf wrote me that a sale of that sort was exactly in his line, and that he'd try to be on hand. He didn't think anybody here would have any money to invest in such truck, and he'd have his own way. He said about the only man hereabouts that he'd have to contend with would be old Welborne, but he would risk him. He don't often allude to home matters, Miss Dixie, but I think Alf counts on havin' things up at the house a little smoother than they was when he went off."
"And maybe he will," the girl answered, thoughtfully, as she turned away.
The only boarders Mrs. Henley had at this time were a certain young married pair, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Allen, who had arrived only a week before with a baby not yet a month old. Allen was a travelling sewing-machine agent, and boarded his wife and child at some farm-house while he drove about the country in a buggy with a sample machine to instruct women in the use of it and take orders.