Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/316

 body to come back to here. I said you never would come; but I planned in the expectation that you would."

"You know what it is now that takes hold of you and twists around you and ties your heart here, like that little yellow weed the children call love-vine. It was born in me, but it gets everybody worth having that stays around in this country a while."

"There may be some subtle, romantic thing like that, Elizabeth, but I think what got me in the end was nothing but a laugh."

"Don't be foolish," said Elizabeth, lifting her eyes in mild correction of what she thought untimely levity.

"Not at all," he denied. "They laughed at me when I first came here, and kept it up the deeper this love-vine business of yours wound round me and tied me up in the town's troubles. Town's troubles! They weren't the town's troubles after I mixed in them. They stuck to me like tar and feathers, they became solely and peculiarly mine. I didn't like that side-stepping of responsibility in the first case. It struck me like a fish thrown in my face, but when they turned around in the end and laughed longer and louder at themselves than they'd ever laughed at me, I began to thaw out and grin with them. That was a spirit I hadn't given them credit for; it was a nerve I could admire.admire." [sic]

"You mean the Burnett joke that started with Little Jack Ryan? Well, you can search me! I couldn't see anything funny in that."

"Of course not, being away. I couldn't convey the subtle humor of the situation in a letter. You had to be on the spot to get the flavor of that joke."

"And a grin's got to be greater than a gun in this