“These got bibs and nice long strings, cover you all up while you’re cooking.  They’re a dollar.”

His gaze, intent on her rather than the aprons, brought her eyes to his.

“Good-looking, but country,” was her swift appraisal, adding to it, “And what a funny mark he’s got on his forehead.”

It was true.  His young hawklike face, tanned brown by sun and wind, was made strangely grim by a dark vein on his brow, which lent a frowning shadow to his whole visage.  Yet the eyes she had looked into were shy and gentle and reassuringly full of open admiration.

“If you think she’ll like ’em I’ll take two,” he said after an instant’s pause.

“I’m sure she’ll like ’em.  They’re good gingham and real well made.  We don’t keep shoddy stuff.  You could go into one of the big stores and get aprons for fifty, sixty cents, but they wouldn’t be good value.”

The soft cadence of her voice gave Wesley a strange and stifled feeling around the heart.  He must—­he must stay and talk to her.  Hardly knowing what he said, he burst into loquacity.

“I did go into one of the big stores, and it sort of scared me—­everything so stuffy and heaped up, and such a lot of people.  I don’t get down to Baltimore very often, you see.  I do most of my buying right in Frederick, but I’d broke my disker, and if you send, it’s maybe weeks before the implement house will ’tend to you.  So I just come down and got the piece, so there won’t be but one day lost.”

The girl looked up at him again, and he could feel his heart pound against his ribs.  This time she was a little wistful.

“They say it’s real pretty country out round Frederick.  I’ve never been out of Baltimore, ’cept to go down the bay on excursions—­Betterton and Love Point, and places like that.  It makes a grand sail in hot weather.”

She handed him the package and picked up the two bills he had laid down on the counter.  There was plainly no reason for his further lingering.  But he had an artful idea.

“Look here—­maybe I ought to get Aunt Dolcey a white apron, too.  Maybe she won’t want the gingham ones at all.”

The girl looked surprised at such extravagance.

“But if she doesn’t you can bring ’em back when you come to Baltimore again, and we’d exchange ’em,” she argued mildly.

“No, I better get a white one now.  She puts on a white apron evenings,” he added craftily.

A box of white aprons was lifted from the shelf and a choice made, but even that transaction could not last forever, as Wesley Dean was desperately aware.

“Look here, are you Miss Tolman?” he burst out.  “I saw the name outside on the window.”

“Mercy, no!  Miss Tolman’s a kind of cousin of mine.  She’s fifty-two, and she can’t hardly get through that door there.”

He disregarded the description, for the second bundle was being tied up fast.  He had never seen any one tie so fast, he thought.