Leaving his sprightly charge in the buggy watching the gathering of the festive crowd and listening to the blatant music of the town band from the balcony of the Carlton House, Henley, making some excuse about having to mail a letter, hastened round a corner and down to Long's store.
The young man, in his best suit of clothes and with the odor of bay-rum in his smooth, compact hair, and the barber's powder on his razor-scraped face, was busy giving instructions to his chief clerk.
"Don't come to me to ax a single question," Henley overheard him saying. "This is one day I simply will have off. If there is anything you don't know about, let it lie over—tell 'em I'm on the committee of entertainment, tell 'em any darned thing you want to, but don't bother me. Oh!" He had caught sight of Henley, who stood half hidden by a stack of soap-boxes, and came forward, his face falling. "My Lord, Alf, don't tell me you didn't fetch her in!" he panted. "Good Lord, don't say that!"
Henley grinned and explained the situation, much to the storekeeper's relief.
"It don't railly make any great difference." Long twisted his small mustache under its coat of pomade till the ends looked like facial spikes, and pulled at his white waistcoat. "I had a nigger make a bucket of lemonade with ice in it, and left an order at the hotel for three of the best meals they know how to put up. I supply the shebang with produce, and I stand in with 'em. They would spread themselves for me. I was counting on having us all three eat in my back-room. I wanted to do exactly the right thing, you see, so she'd know at the outset that I understand how to make a woman comfortable, and that I ain't a man to split hairs when it comes to a little outlay."
"The back-room wouldn't suit at all." Henley was already a wiser man than when he left home that morning. "I wouldn't think of asking her or any decent woman to eat in a room where you bunk, or where anybody bunks, for that matter—male or female."
"I'll just countermand that order, then," Long said, "and we'll all go to the hotel. We'll see the fust part of the show from the buggy, and then repair to the big dining-room and have our banquet."
"I think she'd really like that," Henley declared, "but I'm going to give you both the slip and take dinner with Judge Temple's folks. They made me promise to come the next time I was in; besides, I want to give you both full swing on this day of days."
"Right you are," Long rubbed his heavy hands together in delight, "and you may have the worth of your meal in the finest cigars in my shebang. Alf, you are my friend. Let's go down where she's at. To tell you the God's holy truth, man to man, I don't feel half as good as I make out. It wouldn't take the weight of a hair to make me show the white feather. I have a sort of forewarning that I ain't agoing to walk straight into this thing. If she'd 'a' driv' right up to the front, and got out and gone back to the rear and set down and looked about like she was taking stock of my belongings, I'd have knowed how to proceed, but this way of having to walk a plank that she's propped up has made me sorter weak at the knees. How do I look, anyway—honest, I don't want any flattery? If you think I'd look better in my silk plug-hat and long Prince Albert I can whisk 'em on in a jiffy."
"You are just right." Henley charitably viewed the individual from his own point rather than that of the over-critical Dixie. "In hot sun like this to-day your straw hat will look better, and that sack coat fits like a kid glove."