"Yes; Hank Bradley come home, and told how Dick was blowed away in the awful tornado that destroyed that new town in Oklahoma. Hank had helped hunt for his body; but it never could be identified among the hundreds that was picked up, and so his remains never was brought home. That one fact nearly killed Hettie. I'm talking plain, Dixie, but me and you are good, true friends, and I want you, anyway, to understand my fix. I used to watch her taking walks all by herself in the woods, always in her thick, black veil, and bowed over like, as if she was under a heavy load. I reckon no woman the Lord ever constructed is quite as attractive to the eye uncovered as she is partly hid, for we are always hunting for perfection, and so nothing under the sun seemed to me to be so good and pure and desirable as Hettie did. I even gloried in the attention she paid his mammy and daddy. I thought it was fine and noble, and that it gave the lie to the charge that women are changeable. I don't want you to think that I rate her any lower now, either, Dixie, for I don't. She's a sight better woman than I am a man, and I certainly dogged the life out of her till she agreed to marry me. She told me fair and square at the start that she'd always love him, and I told her that it wouldn't matter a bit. It hurts my pride a little now, but that ain't her lookout. Folks say she's odd and peculiar, and that may be so, too, but she was that way all along, and it's a waste of time to criticise anybody for what they can't help." "I've always liked her," the girl said. "She certainly attends to her own business, and that is more than I can say for my chief enemy, Carrie Wade. Alfred, that girl hates the ground I walk on, and yet she keeps coming to see me. She has me on her visiting list so she can devil me. She has no work to do at home, and so she comes over to nag me. She never has a beau or gets a thing to wear without trotting over to tell me about it or flaunt it in my face. She even makes fun of me for having to work in the field, and is actually insulting sometimes. I'd shut the door in her face, but it would only please her to think she'd made me mad."