the grocery—can you bring them, too?”

Mr. Blake nodded helplessly, and the blacksmith gazed at Harlan, open-mouthed, as he started uphill. “Must sure have a ailment,” he commented, “but I hear tell, Hank, that in the city they never carry nothin’ round with ’em but perhaps an umbrell. Everythin’ else they have ‘sent.’”

“Reckon it’s true enough. I took a ham wunst up to the sanitarium for a young sprig 29 of a doctor that was too proud to carry it himself. He was goin’ that way, too—walkin’ up to save money—so I charged him for carryin’ up the ham just what I’d have took both for. ‘Pigs is high,’ I told him, ‘same price for one as for ’nother,’ but he didn’t pay no attention to it an’ never raised no kick about the price. Thinkin’ ’bout sunthin’ else, most likely—most of ’em are.”

29

Harlan, most assuredly, was “thinkin’ ’bout sunthin’ else.” In fact, he was possessed by portentous uneasiness. There was well-defined doubt in his mind regarding his reception at the Jack-o’-Lantern. Dorothy’s parting words had been plain—almost to the point of rudeness, he reflected, unhappily, and he was not sure that “a brute” would be allowed in her presence again.

The bare, uncurtained windows gave no sign of human occupancy. Perhaps she had left him! Then his reason came to the rescue—there was no way for her to go but downhill, and he would certainly have seen her had she taken that path.

When he entered the yard, he smelled smoke, and ran wildly into the house. A hasty search through all the rooms revealed 30 nothing—even Dorothy had disappeared. From the kitchen window, he saw her in the back yard, poking idly through a heap of smouldering rubbish with an old broomstick.

30

“What are you doing?” he demanded, breathlessly, before she knew he was near her.

Dorothy turned, disguising her sudden start by a toss of her head. “Oh,” she said, coolly, “it’s you, is it?”

Harlan bit his lips and his eyes laughed. “I say, Dorothy,” he began, awkwardly; “I was rather a beast, wasn’t I?”

“Of course,” she returned, in a small, unnatural voice, still poking through the ruins. “I told you so, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t believe you at the time,” Harlan went on, eager to make amends, “but I do now.”

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