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 corrective, shaking her head over the broken-down plot gravely. "That feller might 'a' shot him. I don't want to be mixed up in no murder. It's bad enough to nearly lose a horse."

"Nowhere near it," Tippie denied.

"It ain't hardly right to steer a green stranger into a dangerous piece of business like that," Mrs. Duke went on with her lecture, all the time putting things on her plate, cutting, mixing, stirring, making ready. "I guess we'd be as green in his ways as he is in ours if we was to go to the city. The poor feller didn't know he wasn't welcome here; he didn't come on his own move. He was led on to it, he had a good excuse. The way you boys has played your hand I don't see what Edith can do but marry him now. You put it up to him that way, and he took the bet. After leadin' him on with them letters, too!"

"I never led him on, Aunt Lila," Edith protested, red to the ears, weakly indignant, knowing that she was in no small measure to blame. "I never expected he'd come here any more than I expected the moon to fall."

"Maybe you didn't expect him, but you led him on. It was like givin' a man your note and never expectin' him to ask you to pay it."

"Well, I'll not pay it!" Edith declared in no uncertain spirit.

"I don't see what else you can do and be honest with the man," Mrs. Duke insisted. "He's got a good business back in St. Joe, he tells me."

"It wasn't any more than a little innocent pastime as far as I was concerned," said Edith, no longer slow