"Well," he said, setting his hat to the back of his head and drawing up a chair, "I s'pose we may as well get down to business--eh, boys? Jim here's the only man that has all summer on his hands. You're mighty foolish to sell out now, Jim, with wheat the price it is and the farmers just commencin' to make a little money." "I have all the money I want," said Jimmy Tomlinson, in his thin voice. "You've kep' your nose down to the grindstone for thirty-odd years, eh, and now you want a rest," prompted Nixon, slapping Tomlinson on the knee; "ain't that it, Jim?" "I--I--yes, that's it," said the bachelor. "Thirty-three years," he continued--haltingly at first, but becoming fluent as he proceeded with the verbal expression of a dream that had been so often turned over in his mind that every detail of it was complete--"in storm and sunshine, neighbors, I've walked up and down between m' plow-handles and figured on the day when I could quit and take it easy and get married, like a civilized man--" "Civilized?" put in John Nixon. "Jim, boy, the only man that keeps out of trouble is the man that has sense enough to stay single. Look at him, Bill! Why, he could shave off his mustache, hang a schoolbag over his shoulder, shorten up his pants, and start right in goin' to school, and nobody would know him from a fifteen-year-old boy. Look at him, and then look at us, the same age! Civilized! Jimmy, you take the advice of a man that knows, and stay uncivilized. Eh, Bill?" "Now, now, Nixon," Ware shook a finger at his father-in-law. "Go on, Tomlinson." "----like a civilized man," Tomlinson, wrapped up in his mental picture, resumed as though he had never been interrupted, "and see a little of town life and the things a man reads about. This is a mighty big world we're in, boys, and we don't see much of it from out here. Here in this settlement, every girl's either married or got a feller----" "I thought it was the world you wanted to see, Jim----" "Do shut-up, Nixon. You _are_ an incorrigible chap, you know. Don't mind him, Tomlinson. He really is interested, just as much as I am--that is to say, vastly. Please go on. "----or got a feller," Jimmy Tomlinson continued, staring before him and unconsciously moving his hands on his knees with a species of animation, "and they won't look sideways at you, let alone make up to you----" "Make up to you?" commented Nixon. "Did you hear that, Bill--he wants them to make up to him. I don't want for to interrupt. But could you listen to that, and keep still? I can't! That's why you're still single, Jimmy--at fifty-six."