"What do you want to know, Iz?" he asked with the familiarity born of long years of propinquity. "Reckon you want to ask what everybody else wants to know--when is Jap going to get a saloon?" "You are too smart, Bill Bowers," she retorted, with annoyance. She had had a subject of more personal nature on the tip of her tongue. "I think that Jap will be able to answer his own questions without any help from you." "It is to be hoped that he will make a better stagger at answering than he does at asking," remarked Bill shortly. "Now, Bill Bowers, just what do you mean?" she demanded, her black eyes flashing angrily. "What's the use?" said Bill, in disgust. "Rosy says that she's going to Kansas this fall, and I just will have to let her go because I can't ask her to stay." "Pity about you," she snapped. "Thought you said Jap couldn't ask." "I did," assented Bill, "for if he had gumption enough to get married, or even go courting, I might get by. But as long as he sticks alone I'm going to stick, too." Isabel's face flamed. She stooped to pick up a hit of paper. "What do you want to tell me about it for?" she complained. "My goodness, I'm not to blame." "You are," stormed Bill. "Jap knows that he is not your equal, and he never will marry." "Who said that Jap Herron was not more than the equal of any man on earth?" she blazed. "If Jap will ask me, I'll marry him to-morrow." She whirled away in her wrath, and ran into the arms of Jap Herron, standing half paralyzed with the wonder of it. Bill, who had been watching the unconscious Jap approaching for several minutes, discreetly withdrew. "Gee!" he said, "but they ought not to be kissing in such a public place." There were a dozen customers in the store, but neither Jap nor Isabel knew it. And it is to the credit of Bloomtown that they all looked the other way, as they hurriedly transacted their business and departed. Blanke declared afterward that he filled fifteen prescriptions with epsom salts in his abstraction, and accidentally cured Doc Horton's best paying patient. Moss, the paper hanger, went out with his rolls of paper, and hung the border on the walls, instead of the siding. The mistakes reported were legion; but the town was all courting Isabel with Jap, at heart. Bill rambled into the bank and suggested that Tom go over to Blanke's and lead Jap and Isabel out, as Blanke might want to close the store. Half an hour later Tom came from the drug store, with an arm locked with each of the glowing pair. Straight across Main street they marched, and down the shady walk that flanked the little park until they were opposite the front gate of the Granger home. Then they went in to break the news to Isabel's invalid mother.