"She's more anxious to get attention from men than any woman I ever laid eyes on," Henley declared, resentfully. "When drummers come to sell me goods, she scents 'em a mile down the road, and is in the store pretending to want to buy some knickknack or other before they open their samples. I oughtn't to talk agin a lady, Dixie, but she lays herself open to it, and is so much like a man in some things that I forget what's due her as a woman. She has such a sneering way, too. That reminds me. I heard her mention my name when I passed you and her at the spring the other day. I couldn't hear what she said, but from the way she snickered I knew she was poking fun. I caught this much: she said that I was the only man on earth who was fool enough to do something or other. I couldn't hear what it was, and I didn't care much, but—" Henley broke off, and for a moment his eyes rested on the averted face of his companion.
"I don't carry tales," Dixie finally said, with a touch of embarrassment, "but I've a good mind to tell you exactly what she said, Alfred, so that you won't think it is worse than it really was. It wasn't such an awful thing, and she was laughing more at her own smartness than at you. She said—she said you was the only man under the sun who had gone so far as to adopt a step-father-in-law. Now, that wasn't so terrible, was it?"
A sickly smile struggled for existence on the face of the storekeeper, and his color rose. "Well, that was a new way to put it, anyway," he said. "I think I could laugh hearty at that joke if it was on some other fellow, and I'm glad you told me what it was. I didn't know but what she was saying something even nastier than that."
"She really said some nice things," Dixie went on, diplomatically. "She said it was good of you to give a home to the Wrinkles, and—"
"As I said just now, I won't take credit for that," Henley broke in; "in fact, I'd have refused if I could have done it. It come as a surprise, and it almost knocked me silly. I'd counted on Hettie doing a good many odd things, but I never expected that. So when she come home from the camp-meeting, where there had been such a big religious upheaval, and said she'd met the old man and woman there, and that they both looked so lonely and peaked and ill-fed that she felt like she was acting unfaithful to Dick's memory in living in one county and them in another—well, that's the way it happened. I confess I never thought the pair looked so bad when they come over, for they was awful cheerful, and seemed to 'a' been fed on the fat of the land. Hettie told me afterward that she'd been sending 'em all her spare change, so that was explained. You'd never know the old woman was about unless you stumbled over her in the dark, for she is as quiet as a mouse, and never says a thing nor listens to anybody but him. He's all right. The old man's all right. I really think I'd miss 'im if he was to leave. I never like to encourage him too much, but I often laugh at the jokes he plays on folks. People poke fun at me for having him around, but he drives off the blues sometimes. He showed me what to expect from him the first day he got here. He come down to the store, and walked in and looked around till he saw the tobacco-boxes behind the counter, and he went to 'em and pulled a plug off of each one, and smelt of 'em and looked at 'em in the light. Then he took the best one and sidled over to me. He run his hand down in his pocket, and I thought he was going to pay me for it, but he was just hunting for his knife. He grinned as he clipped a corner off the plug, and stuck it betwixt his short teeth. 'You'll find that I'm a great chawer and smoker, Alf,' he said. Then he axed me if I had such a thing as a empty dry-goods box about, and when I pointed to some in the back-yard that I was saving to put seed-corn in, he said he'd take one and wanted me to have the horses and wagon sent over for a pig they had left. 'I wouldn't send for it,' he said, 'but it has got to be a sort of pet. Its pen used to be right at our window, an' me an' the old lady miss its squealing, especially in the morning. It is as good as an alarm-clock.'"
The girl wiped a smile from her merry mouth. "Excuse me, Alfred," she said, "but it does seem powerful funny. It must be the way you tell it."
"I'm glad it's funny to somebody, and you are more than excusable," he said, dryly. "If I could get as good a joke as that on an enemy of mine I'd never kill 'im in a duel; I'd keep him alive to laugh at."
"You didn't say whether Mr. Wrinkle paid for the tobacco or not," Dixie reminded him, expectantly.
"Well, I'll tell you now that he didn't," was the answer, "nor for a pocketful of red stick-candy which he took from a jar. He said it was for his wife's sweet tooth; but if she got any of it she met him on the road home, for he was chucking it in at a great rate as he walked away."
They both glanced toward Henley's house. They saw the subject of their remarks emerge from the kitchen door, and hang his slouch hat on a nail on the veranda, and reach for the dinner-horn.
"He's going to blow for me," Henley smiled, as the spluttering blast from the horn rang out and reverberated from the mountain-side. "Breakfast is ready. He eats like a horse at all times, and is as hardy as a mountain-goat. I'm going to call him 'Kind Words.'"
"Kind Words"? Dixie looked up inquiringly and smiled. "That's as odd as Carrie's 'stepfather-in-law.' Why are you going to call him that?"
"Because," and Henley glanced back as he was moving away, "the Sunday-school hymn says, 'Kind words can never die,' and I know old Wrinkle won't."
CHAPTER II
"I noticed you was talkin' to Dixie Hart at the fence," he said, as he discarded his quid of tobacco and stroked his grizzled chin, on which a week-old beard grew. "Well, if I wasn't no older'n you are, an' was as good-lookin', which maybe I ain't, I'd chin 'er over the fence mornin', noon, and night—married or unmarried. Man laws was made to keep us straight, I reckon; but when the Lord Himself lived on earth they wasn't quite as bindin' as folks try to make 'em now. A feller, in that day an' time, could be introduced to a new wife every mornin' at breakfast, if he could afford to keep a drove of 'em, and still be looked up to as a wise man and a prophet."
"Dixie was talking about buying a new axe," Henley answered, "but I told her this one was good enough, and that I'd make Pomp grind it."
"She's as purty as red shoes," old Jason said. "And if she hain't had a load to bear, no female ever toted one. Talk about justice! Why, Alf, that gal hain't had a thimbleful sence she was a baby. She has set out to make a livin' fer a mammy that can't hardly see where she's walkin', and an aunt that is mighty nigh tied in a knot with rheumatism, and she is doin' it—bless yore life!—better'n many a man could in the same plight. Folks say she's already paid old Welborne half on that farm, and that before long she'll own it, lock, stock, and barrel. As you may 'a' noticed, I sometimes poke jabs of fun at women, but I never do at her. Somehow I jest can't. I was a-settin' right back of Carrie Wade an' some more frisky gals at meetin' last Sunday when Dixie come in an' tuck a seat on the bench ahead of 'em. I don't let women bother me, one way or another, but I got rippin' mad at that gang. They was makin' sport of her. One of 'em re'ched over an' felt of the ribbon on the pore gal's hat, and then they stuffed the'r handkerchiefs in the'r mouths and come nigh bustin' with giggles. Them sort think they are the whole show, with their white hands, smellin'-stuff, and the'r eyes on every man that passes, while a gal like Dixie Hart is overlooked. I've stood thar at the gate and watched her out in her corn or cotton in the br'ilin' sun with her hoe goin' up and down as regular as the tick of a clock, while the other gals was whiskin' by in some drummer's dinky-top buggy or takin' a snooze flat o' the'r backs in a cool room."
"Is breakfast ready?" Henley asked, with an appreciative nod in recognition of remarks he did not wish to prolong, as he leaned the axe against the front gate and ascended the steps.
"Sech as it is," the old man answered, taking another tack. "When me an' Jane decided to come here to reside, Hettie was goin' to do wonders in the cookin' line. She was particular