"But why, Sally Jane? I don't wanna be sheriff."
"Suppose I want you to?"
"But why should you want me to?"
"Isn't it enough that I ask it?"
"You flirt! You're utterly shameless! You know you can twist me all round your li'l pink finger like a piece of string. You know I'm fool enough to do anything you ask, and——"
"Well then, good fool," she smiled her interruption, "it's all settled. You accept the nomination, and if you don't make things hum after you're elected, you're not the man I take you for."
Bill slipped right off the porch rail and sat down limply on the floor. His eye-balls rolled up. His hand fluttered over his heart. He breathed with difficulty. "At last," he muttered. "Accepted! The shock will be the death of me! Water! Water! With a little whisky stirred in. Just a little. Not more than four or five fingers, or perhaps six. No sugar."
He got to his feet slowly and reseated himself on the rail. "You won't go back on your word, Sally Jane," he told her soberly.
"I can do lots of things you never heard of," said she. "But making two meanings grow where only one grew before is not one of them."
"Joking aside," he said, "will you marry me if I take this sheriff job?"