The time seemed like enchantment to Miss Mattie. As a bringer of the tidings, and a stockholder in the company, she had risen to be a person of importance, with the result that she was even more modestly shy than before, although in her heart she liked it; but more delightful yet was the spirit of holiday activity which inspired and pervaded the place. Red had insisted on operating on the lines that are laid down with railroad spikes in the Western communities; to patronise home industries as much as possible. Therefore the machinery orders went through Mr. Farrel, the blacksmith, initiating that worthy man into the mysteries of making money without doing anything for it, which seemed little less than a miracle to him. Everything that could be bought through local people was obtained in that way. It cost a trifle more, but it brought more money into the place, and enabled the villagers to partake of the enlivenment, without the feeling that it was a Barmecide feast. The post-mistress furnished the paint, and it is painful to add that she tried to furnish a number three paint for a number one price, arguing that she was a poor, lone woman, struggling through an uncharitable world and that the increased profit would do her considerable good--a view which Red did not share. He would willingly have made her a present of the difference, but he did not in the least intend to be choused out of it by man nor woman. They had a very funny debate in private, wherein the feminine tried to dominate the masculine principle by sheer volubility and found to its disgust that the method didn't work. Red listened most respectfully and always replied, "Yes ma'am, but we don't want that paint. Get us some good paint--bully old paint with stick'um in it--this stuff is like whitewash, only feebler. We're going to put on a swell front up at the mill, and we've got to have the right thing." And at last the post-mistress said that she would, her respect for the ex-cowpuncher having risen noticeably in the meantime. V