Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/275

266 socks in the afternoon, and be the belle of the ball in the evening, as you would meet anywhere. I'm speaking of the 'forties now, when she and my grandfather lived in a bit of roughish country down Arizona way. However things had happened Janet had always found that she could make them straight and tidy, until John Baxter Green began to court her. It wasn't that she had any objection to Baxter; quite the opposite, in fact, but the young man was so eternally shy and mistrustful that no amount of encouragement seemed to help him along. At the end of six months, after seeing her every other day on an average, he once ventured to press her hand after bringing her home from a camp meeting, but he got so scared at his boldness that he stayed away from chapel for the next two Sundays. In the second year of their acquaintanceship he accidentally let a 'Janie' slip out and she never caught sight of him for a whole week in consequence. There was no reason on either side why they should not make up and get married within a month, but Janet was mortal sure that if ever he got so far as to give her a kiss he would leave the States for Europe the next day. I don't deny that she was a bit huffed privately at his style, allowed that it did not argue well for the future, and so forth maybe, but she had settled definitely on Baxter, and being a plain, sensible girl she knew that she could not have everything and that there was a quantity of worse faults. However, her father, who was an old-timer, had other ideas. Not that he disliked Baxter either, but he had been a brisk, lively man in his own time and he had notions as to how things ought to be done.

Look here, Janet,' he said one day, 'this has been going on for a matter of well over a twelvemonth now and I have no mind to see a daughter of mine trifled with,