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 minister was next, and then the whole crowd came spilling over him, with chicken on their hands, slapping him on his new coat, and confusing him so that his face was as red as if he had been taken sneaking the barber's ring from the finger of the bride.

They wouldn't allow him to go; he had to sit right down there at the table and have some supper, which was going to go so merrily now for his timely interference with the murderous intentions of Zebedee Smith. There was another pot of coffee in the kitchen, Mrs. Goodloe said, and she went off to fetch it, and the preacher's wife took the broom from Malvina when she would have swept up the grounds from the floor, and swept them up herself, and everybody laughed, and the color came back to Malvina's face.

The solemn declaration of Texas that he had dined, and that he could not make room for another bite, was laughed down. The minister's wife made a place for him beside herself, and he was obliged to take it, for he was too timid and gentle, too lacking in the subtleties of polished society to hurt the feelings of anybody, even anybody as unworthy as the groom.

And when Malvina cut the cake, the first piece of it went to Texas, and when he took it she gave him a look that the minister, sitting at her right