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 glass; 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.