Page:The Country Boy.djvu/109

Rh about the same in looks varying according to who had the colds.

One day a beauty came to town to live with some relatives of hers and she pined some time before she was taken out. I had been out with a threshing crew and we moved on Saturday to a field near Silverton. The grain wasn’t quite ripe enough, so we laid off until Monday,—an awful thing to do in that country, giving us all a chance to go into town and get shaved up and a clean shirt. When I got to town there was a lot of talk on the streets of a dance to be given that night at Egan’s Hop House out in the Waldo Hills. After my shave and hair cut it seemed a shame to waste it; that I’d better go to the dance. My financial condition wasn’t what you’d call very steady. It rose and fell so that I couldn’t hardly count on one girl regularly. But I started in where the most affection lay and met a rather sad refusal. She said she would rather have gone with me, but I hadn’t asked her since early spring, so she was engaged to go with Harvey Allen, the leader of the Trombone Band. I went down the line and got eleven “mittens,” as we called them. Then I even asked one young girl that