“I hate to see a man impose on friendship,” murmured Pink.  “I don’t want to spoil your face till after the Fourth, though that ain’t saying yuh don’t deserve it.  But I will say this:  You’re a liar—­you ain’t had a letter for more than six weeks.”

“Got anything yuh want to bet on that?” Weary reached challengingly toward an inner pocket of his vest.

“Nit.  I don’t give a darn, anyway yuh look at it.  I’m going to bed.”  Pink unrolled his “sooguns” in their accustomed corner next to Weary’s bed and went straightway to sleep.

Weary thumped his own battered pillow into some semblance of plumpness and gazed with suspicion at the thick fringe of curled lashes lying softly upon Pink’s cheeks.

“If I was a girl,” he said pensively to the others, “I’d sure be in love with Cadwolloper myself.  He don’t amount to nothing, but his face ’d cause me to lose my appetite and pine away like a wilted vi’let.  It’s straight, about that girl being stuck on his picture; I’d gamble she’s counting the hours on her fingers, right now, till he’ll stand before her.  Schoolma’am says it’ll be a plumb sin if he don’t act pretty about it and let her love him.”  He eyed Pink sharply from the tail of his eye, but not a lash quivered; the breath came evenly and softly between Pink’s half-closed lips—­and if he heard there was nothing to betray the fact.

Weary sighed and tried again.  “And that ain’t the worst of it, either.  Mame Beckman has got an attack; she told Schoolma’am she could die for Pink and never bat an eye.  She said she never knowed what true love was till she seen him.  She says he looks just like the cherubs—­all but the wings—­that she’s been working in red thread on some pillow shams.  She was making ’em for her sister a present, but she can’t give ’em up, now; she calls all the cherubs ‘Pink,’ and kisses ’em night and morning, regular.”  He paused and watched anxiously Pink’s untroubled face.  “I tell yuh, boys, it’s awful to have the fatal gift uh beauty, like Cadwolloper’s got.  He means all right, but he sure trifles a lot with girls’ affections—­which ain’t right.  Mamma! don’t he look sweet, laying there so innocent?  I’m sure sorry for Mame, though.”  He eyed him sidelong.  But Pink slept peacefully on, except that, after a half minute, he stirred slightly and muttered something about “drive that darned cow back.”  Then Weary gave up in despair and went to sleep.  When the tent became silent, save for the heavy breathing of tired men.  Pink’s long lashes lifted a bit, and he grinned maliciously up at the cloth roof.

For obvious reasons he was the only one of the lot who heard with no misgivings the vicious swoop of the storm; so long as the tent-pegs held he didn’t care how hard it rained.  But the others who woke to the roar of wind and the crash of thunder and to the swish and beat of much falling water, turned uneasily in their beds and hoped that it would not last long.  To be late in starting for that particular scene of merry-making which had held their desires for so long would be a calamity they could not reflect upon calmly.