slip out to the dance and surprise them. I told her I didn’t care much for such things owing to the crowd that went, but that now I could see a dance as I never had before. So I helped Nettie into the buggy just where it stood and she sat there thinking, perhaps, while I went to get the horse. And you bet I wasn’t gone long, and the way we saluted each other when I returned with the horse showed that we had already begun to get chummy, and how much better it sounded than to be distant. I backed the horse into the shafts and harnessed and hitched him right where he stood, but I got half of his harness backwards. I couldn’t think of anything pertaining to harness, so when I got into the buggy I drove out through the barnyard as quiet as possible and feeling about as good as a young man ever feels. I was afraid to breathe for fear my arm would touch hers. I wanted to get to the dance as quickly as possible before anybody left so that the advertisement I would get from being seen with this beautiful girl would be as big as possible. I didn’t have time to get any candy hearts, or in fact anything, and the perfume she had on seemed a fit emblem to
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THE COUNTRY BOY
