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 lative proposal. Indeed, his manner of speech might lead one not schooled in such crude diction to take it that Waco intimated he already was a whale, for he invariably put it that way:

"How you likes to be a w'ale?"

Tom assured him, as always, that he'd like it fine, and then jumped right in to take the blame for coming home without tobacco. Waco's face elongated till there was not a horse in the team that could have bested him much on measurement.

"Hell's woodpeckers! I'm out!" he said.

"So am I," Tom admitted glumly. "I left there in a devil of a hurry—tell you about it later—here comes Eudora."

Waco knew something was urging a man along when he left town in such a hurry as to forget not only his friend's tobacco but his own, and he suspected it was a business that Tom wanted to keep from the women, above all.

"You made a flyin' trip, Tom," Eudora said, running up, the brightness of welcome in her face.

"He's a flyin' gopher," said Waco, pulling his long, lugubrious face down to wet-leather length. "He come off and forgot my t'backer."

"Oh, you Tom!" she laughed. And then she tiptoed and took a peep into the wagon. "And you forgot the groceries!" she said, looking up at him in reproving amazement.

"I'm altogether untrustworthy and unfit to run around without a nurse," Tom said contritely. "I didn't think of them, Eudora, till I was fifteen or twenty miles along. Then I didn't want to turn back."