acquired a clear field.  Tinkletown’s beaux gave up in despair and dropped out of the contest with the hope that complete recovery from his injuries might not only banish Bonner from the village, but also from the thoughts of Rosalie Gray.  Most of the young men took their medicine philosophically.  They had known from the first that their chances were small.  Blootch Peabody and Ed Higgins, because of the personal rivalry between themselves, hoped on and on and grew more bitter between themselves, instead of toward Bonner.

[Illustration:  “‘I beg your pardon,’ he said humbly”]

Anderson Crow and Eva were delighted and the Misses Crow, after futile efforts to interest the young man in their own wares, fell in with the old folks and exuberantly whispered to the world that “it would be perfectly glorious.”  Roscoe was not so charitable.  He was soundly disgusted with the thought of losing his friend Bonner in the hated bonds of matrimony.  From his juvenile point of view, it was a fate that a good fellow like Bonner did not deserve.  Even Rosalie was not good enough for him, so he told Bud Long; but Bud, who had worshipped Rosalie with a hopeless devotion through most of his short life, took strong though sheepish exceptions to the remark.  It seemed quite settled in the minds of every one but Bonner and Rosalie themselves.  They went along evenly, happily, perhaps dreamily, letting the present and the future take care of themselves as best they could, making mountains of the past—­mountains so high and sheer that they could not be surmounted in retreat.

Bonner was helplessly in love—­so much so, indeed, that in the face of it, he lost the courage that had carried him through trivial affairs of the past, and left him floundering vaguely in seas that looked old and yet were new.  Hourly, he sought for the first sign of love in her eyes, for the first touch of sentiment; but if there was a point of weakness in her defence, it was not revealed to the hungry perception of the would-be conqueror.  And so they drifted on through the February chill, that seemed warm to them, through the light hours and the dark ones, quickly and surely to the day which was to call him cured of one ill and yet sorely afflicted by another.

Through it all he was saying to himself that it did not matter what her birth may have been, so long as she lived at this hour in his life, and yet a still, cool voice was whispering procrastination with ding-dong persistency through every avenue of his brain.  “Wait!” said the cool voice of prejudice.  His heart did not hear, but his brain did.  One look of submission from her tender eyes and his brain would have turned deaf to the small, cool voice—­but her eyes stood their ground and the voice survived.