Wherefore, when Dorcas met Link at a church sociable and again on
a straw ride and asked him to come and see her some time, her
sire made no objection. Indeed he welcomed the bashful caller
with something like an approach to cordiality.

Dorcas was a calm-eyed, efficient damsel, more than a little
pretty, and with much repose of manner. Link Ferris, from the
first, eyed her with a certain awe. When a mystic growing
attraction was added to this and when it in turn merged into
love, the sense of awe was not lost. Rather it was strengthened.

In all his thirty-one lean and lonely years Link had never before
fallen in love. At the age when most youths are sighing over some
wonder girl, he had been too busy fighting off bankruptcy and
starvation to have time or thought for such things.

Wherefore, when love at last smote him it smote him hard. And it
found him woefully unprepared for the battle.

He knew nothing of women. He did not know, for example, what the
average youth finds out in his teens--that grave eyes and silent
aloofness and lofty self-will and icy pietism in a maiden do not
always signify that she is a saint and that she must be worshiped
as such. Ferris had no one to tell him that far oftener these
signs point merely to stupid narrowness and to lack of ideas.

Dorcas was clever at housework. She was quietly self-assured. She
was good to look upon. She was not like any of the few girls Link
had met. Wherefore he built for her a sacred shrine in his