Ajax discreetly descanted upon the widow’s fine complexion, but old man Kapus lent him but an indifferent ear.

“She’s fat an’ slick,” he admitted, “but Johnnie’s fat an’ slick, too.  An’ who made him so?  Why—­his uncle Abram.  D’ye think now that I’ve fed him up and got him into sech fine shape that he’ll leave me?  No, sir.  You might act that-a-way, but not my Johnnie.”

After dinner, we accompanied Uncle Abram as far as the creek which flows between the village and our domain.  Here stand some fine cottonwood trees and half-a-dozen lordly white-oaks.  The spot is famous as a picnicking ground, and in the heat of summer is as cool a place as may be found in the county.  And here, paddling in the brook like an urchin, we found Bumblepuppy.  His eyes sparkled as they fell upon the face of his uncle.

“Ye’ve got back, Johnnie,” said the old man.

“Yas.  ’Twas hotter’n a red-hot stove on the road.”

“Ye druv in with the widder woman?”

“Yas.  I druv in with her; but I walked back.  Guess I run the most o’ the way, too.”

“An’ Mis’ Janssen—­wheer is she?”

“I dunno’, uncle Abram.”

“Is she still a widder woman, Johnnie?”

“She was when I left her,” said Bumblepuppy.

He had ascended the bank.  Sitting down, he began to put on his socks.  I noted the admirable symmetry of calf and ankle; I thought of the lungs and muscles which had sustained the superb body during a twenty-six mile run between blazing earth and sky.

“What in thunder did ye go to town fer?” asked the old man.  “Speak up, Johnnie.  Give us the cold facts.”

Then Bumblepuppy made the speech of his life.

“Uncle Abram, you tole me to obey Mis’ Janssen, an’ do what she said.”

“That’s so, Johnnie.”

“Yesday, she tole me to fix up an’ be ready to go to San Lorenzy with her.  She said we’d travel by night ‘cause o’ the heat.  An’ she said I was not to ‘sturb you.  She said she’d come to the winder an’ tap.  Then I’d crawl out without ‘sturbin’ you.  Wal—­she come around about two, jest as the roosters was a’crowin ’fer the second time.  I slipped out o’ winder in my stockined feet.  I hope I didn’t ’sturb ye?”

“Ye didn’t.  Go on.”

“In town Mis’ Janssen said she’d fixed it up to marry me.  She said I needed a lovin’ wife, and that me an’ she’d have a Fourth o’ July time together.  I said nothing, ‘cause you’d tole me never to interrup’ a lady when she was a-talkin’.  She kep’ on a-talkin’ till we got to the Court House, where Mis’ Janssen bought a licence.  Then we hunted a minister.  Bimeby, he ast me if I was willin’ to take Sairy Anne Janssen to be my wife——­”

“An’ ye said NO, my own Johnnie?”

“That’s what I done, Uncle Abram.  And then she sez, kinder wheedlin’:  ‘But you will marry yer Sairy Anne, Johnnie, won’t ye?’ And then, gittin’ scared, I kinder forgot my manners, fer I said:  ’No—­I’m d——­ d if I will!’ An’ I disremember what she said nex’, but I found myself in the road, a-runnin’ like a mad steer.  Jee! that road was hotter’n a red-hot stove!”