"I reckon," said Mrs. Tucker smiling; "but tell me something about the
boys and girls at Vineville, and about yourself. YOU'RE looking well,
and right smart too." She paused to give due emphasis to this latter
recognition of a huge gold chain with which her visitor was somewhat
ostentatiously trifling.

"I didn't know as you cared to hear anything about Blue Grass," he
returned, a little abashed. "I've been away from there some time
myself," he added, his uneasy vanity taking fresh alarm at the faint
suspicion of patronage on the part of his hostess. "They're doin' well,
though; perhaps as well as some others."

"And you're not married yet," continued Mrs. Tucker, oblivious of the
innuendo. "Ah, Cal," she added archly, "I am afraid you are as fickle as
ever. What poor girl in Vineville have you left pining?"

The simple face of the man before her flushed with foolish gratification
at this old-fashioned, ambiguous flattery. "Now look yer, Belle," he
said, chuckling, "if you're talking of old times and you think I bear
malice agin Spencer, why--"

But Mrs. Tucker interrupted what might have been an inopportune
sentimental retrospect with a finger of arch but languid warning. "That
will do! I'm dying to know all about it, and you must stay to dinner and
tell me. It's right mean you can't see Spencer too; but he isn't back
from Sacramento yet."

Grateful as a tete-a-tete with his old neighbor in her more prosperous
surroundings would have been, if only for the sake of later gossiping