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 "Why, what do you mean?"

"You two engaged? Going to be engaged? He going to marry you?"

"Of course not."

"Been making love to you, ain't he?"

"Oh, never!"

"Never hugged you or kissed you?"

"Never!"

"How far'd he go?"

"Oh, he didn't!"

"Why you been looking so kind of peeked lately?"

"Oh, I just don't feel very well. Oh, I feel fine. It's just the spring coming on, I guess—" She dropped to the floor and, with her head against the churn, her thin fingers beating an hysterical tattoo on the floor, she choked with weeping.

"There, there, Lu! Your dad'll do something about it."

Floyd was waiting in the farmyard.

There were, in those parts and those days, not infrequent ceremonies known as "shotgun weddings."

The Reverend Elmer Gantry was reading an illustrated pink periodical devoted to prize fighters and chorus girls in his room at Elizabeth J. Schmutz Hall late of an afternoon when two large men walked in without knocking.

"Why, good evening, Brother Bains—Brother Naylor! This is a pleasant surprise. I was, uh— Did you ever see this horrible rag? About actoresses. An invention of the devil himself. I was thinking of denouncing it next Sunday. I hope you never read it—won't you sit down, gentlemen?—take this chair— I hope you never read it, Brother Floyd, because the footsteps of—"

"Gantry," exploded Deacon Bains, "I want you to take your footsteps right now and turn 'em toward my house! You've been fooling with my daughter, and either you're going to marry her, or Floyd and me are going to take it out of your hide, and way I feel just now, don't much care which it is."

"You mean to say that Lulu has been pretending—"

"Naw, Lulu ain't said nothing. God, I wonder if I ought to let the girl marry a fellow like you? But I got to protect her good name, and guess Floyd and me can see to it you give