368 CHAMP. 



those accomplishments to the fact that he had an eye 

 for a pretty girl or a compliment for a plain one, you 

 can form an idea of the didoes he cut up around here 

 for a time. At all events, the spring after he came to 

 the store it looked every afternoon like a church fair 

 at Flynn's. I would hear every few days that this, 

 that, and the other girl was eternally running down 

 to Flynn's to buy a paper of pins, a spool of thread, a 

 bottle of hair oil, or something like that. You never 

 saw the like of it. It seemed as if all of them were 

 after Lem hot foot, and he was as proud as Lucifer. 

 You can rest assured that this did not make him very 

 popular with the young men in the village, and they 

 did not fail to show it whenever an opportunity pre- 

 sented itself. As I was too busy to bother with such 

 matters, Lem told me time and again of his troubles 

 and triumphs. I advised him to pull up, but I find 

 that people do not like advice unless it chimes in with 

 their own ideas. 



"Another card in Lem's favor was played in May 

 when his mother sent him a top buggy and a hand- 

 some brown mare. He put them up at my stable, 

 and you can depend that neither the horse nor buggy 

 were dusty for want of use. He was out every night 

 until all hours, and in a short time the neighbors began 

 to talk. I was told four or five times that he and 

 one of the village girls were going to make a match 

 of it, but something always happened. Since then 

 I learned that his mother had someone watching 

 him, and in a day or so she called on the girl's 

 mother. This made Lem as cross as a bear with a 

 sore paw, but he was not sharp enough to learn who 

 did it. ■ 



