A jay-bird-blue tennis suit covered him outwardly, almost as far as
his wrists and ankles. His shirt was ox-blood; his collar winged and
tall; his necktie a floating oriflamme; his shoes a venomous bright
tan, pointed and shaped on penitential lasts. A little flat straw hat
with a striped band desecrated his weather-beaten head. Lemon-coloured
kid gloves protected his oak-tough hands from the benignant May
sunshine. This sad and optic-smiting creature teetered out of its den,
smiling foolishly and smoothing its gloves for men and angels to see.
To such a pass had Dry Valley Johnson been brought by Cupid, who
always shoots game that is out of season with an arrow from the quiver
of Momus. Reconstructing mythology, he had risen, a prismatic macaw,
from the ashes of the grey-brown phoenix that had folded its tired
wings to roost under the trees of Santa Rosa.

Dry Valley paused in the street to allow Santa Rosans within sight of
him to be stunned; and then deliberately and slowly, as his shoes
required, entered Mrs. O'Brien's gate.

Not until the eleven months' drought did Santa Rosa cease talking
about Dry Valley Johnson's courtship of Panchita O'Brien. It was an
unclassifiable procedure; something like a combination of cake-
walking, deaf-and-dumb oratory, postage stamp flirtation and parlour
charades. It lasted two weeks and then came to a sudden end.

Of course Mrs. O'Brien favoured the match as soon as Dry Valley's
intentions were disclosed. Being the mother of a woman child, and
therefore a charter member of the Ancient Order of the Rat-trap, she
joyfully decked out Panchita for the sacrifice. The girl was
temporarily dazzled by having her dresses lengthened and her hair
piled up on her head, and came near forgetting that she was only a