Surprisin', yes, sir, considerin' how I'm fixed--most _sur_prisin'."

He took off his beautiful coat, and wrapped it carefully in tissue paper. We were sitting on the verandah after supper, and were well into our second pipes. The moonlight illumined the valley, but Jasperson's small delicate face was in shadow. From the creek hard by came the croaking of many frogs, from the cow pasture the shrilling of the crickets. A cool breeze from the Pacific was stirring the leaves of the willows and cottonwoods, and the wheat, now two feet high, murmured praise and thanksgiving for the late rains. When nature is eloquent, why should a mortal refrain from speech?

"Boys," continued Jasperson; "I'm a-goin' to tell ye something; because--well, because I feel like it. I've never had no best girl!"

"Jasperson," said Ajax, "I can't believe that. What! you, a young and----"

"I ain't young," interrupted the man of independent means. "I'm nigh on to thirty-six. Don't flim-flam me, boys. I ain't young, and I ain't beautiful, but fixed up I am--dressy, an' that should count."

"It does count," said my brother, emphatically. "I've seen you, Jasperson, on Sundays, when I couldn't take my eyes off you. The girls must be crazy."

"The girls, gen'lemen, air all right; the trouble ain't with them.

It's with me. Don't laugh: it ain't no laughin' matter. Boys--I'm bashful. That's what ails Jasper Jasperson. The girls," he cried scornfully; "you bet they know a soft snap when they see it, and I am a soft snap, an' don't you forget it!

"I left my own land," he continued dreamily, in a soft, melancholy voice, "because there ain't a lady within fifteen miles o' my barn, and here there's a village, and----"

"Her name, please," said Ajax, with authority; "you must tell us her name."

"Wal," he bent forward, and his face came out of the shadows; we could see that his pale blue eyes, red-rimmed and short-sighted, were suffused with tender light, and his pendulous lower lip was a-quiver with emotion; even the hair of his head--tow-coloured and worn _a la Pompadour_--seemed to bristle with excitement, "Wal," he whispered "it's--it's Miss Birdie Dutton!"

In the silence that followed I could see Ajax pulling his moustache.

Miss Birdie Dutton! Why, in the name of the Sphinx, should Jasperson have selected out of a dozen young ladies far more eligible Miss Birdie Dutton? She was our postmistress, a tall, dark, not uncomely virgin of some thirty summers. But, alas! one of her eyes was fashioned out of gla.s.s; her nose was masculine and masterful; and her chin most positive. Jasperson's chin was equally conspicuous-- negatively. Miss Birdie, be it added, was a frequent contributor to the columns of the _San Lorenzo Banner_, and Grand Secretary of a local temperance organisation. She boarded with the Swiggarts; and Mr.

Swiggart, better known as Old Smarty, told me in confidence that "she wouldn't stand no foolishness"; and he added, reflectively, that she was something of a "bull-dozer." I knew that Old Smarty had sold his boarder an aged and foundered bronco for fifty dollars, and that within twenty-four hours the animal had been returned to him and the money refunded to Miss Birdie. Many persons had suffered grievously at the hands of Mr. Swiggart, but none, saving Miss Dutton, could boast of beating him in a horse-deal.

Presently I expressed surprise that Jasperson had the honour of Miss Dutton's unofficial acquaintance.

"I was interdooced last fall," said our friend, "at a candy-pullin' up to Mis' Swiggart's. Not that Miss Birdie was a-pullin' candy. No, sir; she ain't built that a way, but she was settin' there kind of scornful, but smilin' An' later she an' me sung some hymns together.

Mebbe, gen'lemen, ye've heard Miss Birdie sing?"

I shook my head regretfully, but Ajax spoke enthusiastically of the lady's powers as a vocalist. He had previously described her voice to me as "a full choke, warranted to kill stone-dead at sixty yards."

"It is a lovely voice," sighed Jasperson, "strong, an' full, an' rich.

Why, there ain't an organ in the county can down her high B!" Then, warmed by my brother's sympathy, he fumbled in his pocket, and found a sheet of note-paper. Upon this he had written a quatrain that he proposed to read to us _au clair de la lune_. The lines were addressed: "To My Own Blackbird."

"She's a pernounced brunette," explained the poet; "and her name is Birdie. I thought some of ent.i.tlin' the pome: 'To a Mocking Bird'; but I surmised that would sound too pussonal. She has mocked me, an'

others, more'n once."

He sighed, still smarting at the memory of a gibe; then he recited the following in an effective monotone:--

"Oh! scorn not the humble worm, proud bird, As you sing i' the top o' the tree; Though doomed to squirm i' the ground, unheard.

He'll make a square meal for thee."

"It ain't Shakespeare," murmured the bard, "but the idee is O.K."

My brother commended the lines as lacking neither rhyme nor reason, but he questioned the propriety of alluding to a lady's appet.i.te, and protested strongly against the use of that abject word--worm. He told Jasperson that in comparing himself to a reptile he was slapping the cheeks of his progenitors.

"But I do feel like a worm when Miss Birdie's around," objected the man of acres. "It may be ondignified, but that there eye of hers does make me wiggle."

"It's a thousand pities," said I softly, "that Miss Dutton has only one eye."

Jasperson wouldn't agree with me. He replied, with ardour, that he would never have dared to raise his two blue orbs to Miss Dutton's brilliant black one, unless he had been conscious that his mistress, like himself, had suffered mutilation.

"I'm two fingers short," he concluded, "an' she's lackin' an eye.

That, gen'lemen, makes it a stand-off. Say, shall I send her this yere pome?"

"Most certainly not," said Ajax.

"Then for the Lord's sake, post me."

I touched Ajax with my foot, and coughed discreetly; for I knew my brother's weakness. He is a spendthrift in the matter of giving advice. If Jasperson had appealed to me, the elder and more experienced, I should have begged politely, but emphatically, to be excused from interference. I hold that a man and a maid must settle their love affairs without help from a third party. Ajax, unhappily, thinks otherwise.

"Miss Dutton," he began, tentatively, "is aware, Jasperson, of your-- er--pa.s.sion for her?"

"She ain't no sech a thing," said the lover.

"Yet her eye," continued Ajax, "is keen--keen and penetrating."

"It's a peach," cried the enthusiastic poet. "There ain't another like it in the land, but it can't see in the dark; an', boys, I've not shown my hand--yet!"

"You've made no advances directly or indirectly?"

"Not a one. By golly! I--I da.s.sn't. I jest didn't know how. I ain't up to the tricks. You air, of course; but I'm not."

My brother somewhat confusedly hastened to a.s.sure Jasperson that his knowledge of the s.e.x was quite elementary, and gleaned for the most part from a profound study of light literature.

The poet grinned derisively. "You ain't no tenderfoot," he said. "I reckon that what you don't know about the girls ain't worth picklin'."

"Well, if you mean business," said Ajax didactically, "if nothing we can say or do will divert your mind from courtship and matrimony--if, my dear Jasperson, you are prepared to exchange the pleasant places, the sunny slopes, and breezy freedom of bachelor life for the th.o.r.n.y path that leads to the altar, and thence to--er--the cradle, if, in short, you are determined to own a best girl, why, then the first and obvious thing to do is to let her know discreetly that you're in love with her."

"As how?" said Jasperson, breathlessly. "I told ye that when she was around I felt like a worm."

"You spoke of wiggling," replied my brother; "and I suppose that heretofore you have wiggled _from_ and not _to_ the bird.

Next time, wiggle up, my boy--as close as possible."

"You're dead right," murmured the disciple; "but look at here: when I call on Miss Birdie, she sez, 'Mister Jasperson,' or, mebbe, 'Mister Jasper, please be seated, an' let me take your hat.' Naterally, boys, I take the chair she p'ints out, an' then, dog-gone it! she takes _another_."

"Do you expect this young lady to sit down in your lap, sir? Maids, Jasperson, must not be lightly put to confusion. They must be stalked, and when at bay wooed with tender words and languishing glances. Now listen to me. Next Sunday, when you call upon Miss Dutton, take the chair she offers, but as soon as a suitable opportunity presents itself, ask to see the alb.u.m. Thus you will cleverly betray a warm interest in her by showing a lively interest in her people. And to look over an alb.u.m two persons must----"

"You bet they must," interrupted the poet. "They must nestle up.

That's right! What kind of a chump am I not to have thought of that before? Yes, boys, she's got an alb.u.m, a beaut', too: crimson plush an' nickel. And, of course, the pictures of her folks is inside. By gum! I'll give the homeliest of 'em sech a send-off as----"

"You will not," said Ajax. "Remember, Jasperson, that a burning black eye indicates jealousy, which you must beware of arousing. Don't praise too wantonly the beauty of Miss Dutton's sisters and cousins; but if the father is well-looking, pay your mistress the compliment of saying that the children of true lovers always take after the father.

In turning the leaves of the alb.u.m you might touch her hand, quite accidentally. No less an authority than Mr. Pickwick commends a respectful pressure."

"I'll do it," exclaimed Jasperson, "I'll do it, sure!"

"Has she a pretty hand?" I asked.

"Has she a pretty hand!" echoed the lover, in disdainful tones, "She has the hand of a queen! The Empress of Roosia ain't got a whiter nor a finer hand! Miss Birdie ain't done no harder work than smackin' a kid that needs it."