"'At's a nice question!" "Girl told me you were engaged to a Yankee you met up in Asheville last summer." Sally Carrol sighed. "Never saw such an old town for rumors." "Don't marry a Yankee, Sally Carrol. We need you round here." Sally Carrol was silent a moment. "Clark," she demanded suddenly, "who on earth shall I marry?" "I offer my services." "Honey, you couldn't support a wife," she answered cheerfully. "Anyway, I know you too well to fall in love with you." "'At doesn't mean you ought to marry a Yankee," he persisted. "S'pose I love him?" He shook his head. "You couldn't. He'd be a lot different from us, every way." He broke off as he halted the car in front of a rambling, dilapidated house. Marylyn Wade and Joe Ewing appeared in the doorway. "'Lo Sally Carrol." "Hi!" "How you-all?" "Sally Carrol," demanded Marylyn as they started of again, "you engaged?" "Lawdy, where'd all this start? Can't I look at a man 'thout everybody in town engagin' me to him?" Clark stared straight in front of him at a bolt on the clattering wind-shield. "Sally Carrol," he said with a curious intensity, "don't you 'like us?" "What?" "Us down here?" "Why, Clark, you know I do. I adore all you boys." "Then why you gettin' engaged to a Yankee?" "Clark, I don't know. I'm not sure what I'll do, but--well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale." "What you mean?" "Oh, Clark, I love you, and I love Joe here and Ben Arrot, and you-all, but you'll--you'll---" "We'll all be failures?" "Yes. I don't mean only money failures, but just sort of--of ineffectual and sad, and--oh, how can I tell you?" "You mean because we stay here in Tarleton?" "Yes, Clark; and because you like it and never want to change things or think or go ahead." He nodded and she reached over and pressed his hand. "Clark," she said softly, "I wouldn't change you for the world. You're sweet the way you are. The things that'll make you fail I'll love always--the living in the past, the lazy days and nights you have, and all your carelessness and generosity." "But you're goin' away?" "Yes--because I couldn't ever marry you. You've a place in my heart no one else ever could have, but tied down here I'd get restless. I'd feel I was--wastin' myself. There's two sides to me, you see. There's the sleepy old side you love an' there's a sort of energy--the feeling that makes me do wild things. That's the part of me that may be useful somewhere, that'll last when I'm not beautiful any more." She broke of with characteristic suddenness and sighed, "Oh, sweet cooky!" as her mood changed.