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 to defend herself publicly, seeing that she was publicly arraigned. "You ought to have sense enough to understand that, even if he hasn't."

"When I was a girl we didn't have mail-order beaux," Mrs. Duke said, superior in her uncontaminated innocence. "But I know right and wrong, and the way you're treatin' that boy's wrong."

"Boy! Aunt Lila, he's thirty-five, if he's a day."

"He's a boy in experience. He don't know what you mean when you write 'Yes' and say 'No.

"Did it hurt him when the horse pitched him over the fence?" Rawlins inquired, hoping to turn the current of Mrs. Duke's virtuous argument.

"His face is scratched up a little, but he didn't break anything, as far as I can tell," Mrs. Duke replied.

"No, he couldn't have made that time with anything broken," Rawlins told her. "He had farther to go than the horse, but I believe he nearly beat it."

"It ain't no laughin' matter," she reproved. "Just look at the mess we'd 'a' been in if he'd 'a' been killed."

"Trouble to find a coffin long enough without doublin' him," said Tippie, rancorously.

"Well, you let him alone," Mrs. Duke admonished. "When he finds out he ain't wanted I guess he's got sense enough to leave. I took him for a kind of a joke myself till I saw him come in that door with his eyes popped out of his head so fur I could 'a' hung my shoes on 'em. His face was a-bleedin', he was a-gaspin' and a-gappin' like a feller that was about gone. He stood leanin' his back agin the door, holdin' it shut like he was scairt somebody was tight after him, openin' his mouth without a bit more sound comin'