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 "You let him alone, Elmer. After dinner you and Ned load up a wagon and go out to the boys. You leave Mr. Peck to me."

Mrs. Duke worked herself up into considerable heat over Peck's wrongs, and her position as defender of his well-meaning simplicity. She was a lady who loomed large at the table, seeming to be elevated by a cushion, or a dictionary, or a Dr. Gunn, in the manner many a child of sturdy American freemen received its first contact with knowledge. This was accounted for by the uncommon length of her back, which hoisted head and shoulders to a level with any man when she was sitting.

She was wearing a red dress with white dots, the collar of it somewhat disproportionate to the generous mold of her neck, a very leaflet of a collar indeed, of one width all around, edged with a narrow white binding. It was altogether too juvenile for Mrs. Duke's figure, which, while still growing, was no longer young.

"You can throw that hospital band in with old Alvino's," she directed Tippie. "He's a good herder, that man knows more about sheep than any human I ever saw. You'd think he was related. You'll be a week or more gittin' around to the boys, I guess, won't you, Elmer?"

"Not unless I break a leg," Elmer replied ungraciously.

"Take your time. Let me know how that lawyer feller's doin'—Riley—you know the one."

"Um-m-m," Elmer grunted.

"And after this, you leave Mr. Peck to me."

There was no other way for it, in the face of such