They stood side by side on the platform the next Monday when the train rolled into the station at Boomtown, panting with fatigue from its long run. Flaxen caught sight of Bert first as she sprang off the train, and running to him, kissed him without much embarrassment. Then she looked around, saying: "Where's ol' pap? Didn't he--" "Why, Flaxen, don't ye know me?" he cried out at her elbow. She knew his voice, but his shaven face, so much more youthful, was so strange that she knew him only by his eyes laughing down into hers. Nevertheless she kissed him doubtfully. "Oh, what've you done? You've shaved off your whiskers; you don't look a bit natural. I--" She was embarrassed, almost frightened, at the change in him. He "looked so queer"; his fair, untroubled, smiling face and blond moustache made him look younger than Bert. "Nev' mind that! She'll grow again if y' like it better. Get int' this new buggy--it's ours. They ain't no flies on us to-day; not many," said Ans in high glee, elaborately assisting her to the carriage, not appreciating the full meaning of the situation. As they rode home he was extravagantly gay. He sat beside her, and she drove, wild with delight at the prairie, the wheat, the gulls, everything. "Ain't no dust on our clo'es," said Ans, coughing, winking at Bert, and brushing off with an elaborately finical gesture an imaginary fleck from his knee and elbow. "Ain't we togged out? I guess nobody said 'boo' to us down to St. Peter, eh?" "You like my clo'es?" said Flaxen, with charming directness. "You bet! They're scrumptious." "Well, they ought to be; they're my best, except my white dress. I thought you'd like 'em; I wore 'em a-purpose." "Like 'em? They're--you're jest as purty as a red lily er a wild rose in the wheat--ahem! Ain't she, Bert, ol' boy? We're jest about starvin' to death, we are." "I knew you'd be. What'll I stir up for supper? Biscuits?" "Um, um! Say, what y' s'pose I've got to go with 'em?" "Honey." "Oh, you're too sharp," wailed Ans, while Flaxen went off into a peal of laughter. "Say, Bert's be'n in the damnedest--excuse me--plaguedest temper fer the last two munce as you ever did see." While this chatter was going on Bert sat silent and unsmiling on the back seat. He was absorbed in seeing the exquisite colour that played in her cheek and the equally charming curves of her figure. She was well dressed and was wonderfully mature. He was saying to himself: "Ans ain't got no more judgment than a boy. We can't keep that girl here. More'n that, the girl never'll be contented again, unless--" He did not allow himself to go farther. He dared not even think farther.