window, where Pap smoked Tulip Roses, turning now and then to spit, with the perfection of loftiness, on the splintery floor.
During these watches at the wicket Pap was not voluble. He seldom spoke at all, just stood there leaning on his arms, his watch-chain hooked high up in his black sateen shirt, his watch in the pocket of that favored garment of railroad men of the period. He was like a slow old cat waiting at a hole for a goper to come out, not much concerned whether it ever would appear, but serenely easy in the waiting. It was a sort of public adulation extremely distasteful to the object. It seemed to admit some sort of arrangement, which McPacken was quick to accept and respect.
This progression in Pap's courtship, for it was nothing less romantic, had been made during the two weeks since Tom Laylander went away from McPacken with his cattle. It might go on, Louise thought, smiling whimsically at the absurdity of it, until Pap would take possession of her in due course, unless she began to develop cruelty, and got herself despised by McPacken for her airs, or made a retreat before the slow pressure of Pap's affections, which were about as quick and warm as a glacier.
Seriously, she would leave McPacken. That was all there remained to be done. Tom Laylander never was coming back; the place grew more desolate every day. Her situation at the court house was pleasant, but uncertain. Election would take place in a few weeks; the county treasurer might not be retained in office, in
