ildly:

"Now don't you go and git upset, Babe."

"Babe" turned upon him savagely:

"And don't you go to takin' sides! I'm used to livin' good an' when I
think what I give up to come down here to this hole--"

"I know 'taint what you're used to," Jennings agreed in a conciliatory
tone.

Smaltz took this occasion to ostentatiously inspect a confection the
upper and lower crusts of which stuck together like two pieces of
adhesive plaster.

"Looks like somebudy's been high-gradin' this here pie."

The criticism might have touched even a mild-tempered cook; it made a
demon of Bertha. She started around the table with the obvious intention
of doing Smaltz bodily harm, but at the moment, Porcupine Jim, whose
roving eye had been searching the table for more food, lighted upon one
of the special dishes set before Jennings' plate.

It _looked_ like rice pudding with raisins in it! If there was one
delicacy which appealed to James's palate more than another it was rice
pudding with raisins in it. He arose from the bench in all the pristine
splendor of the orange-colored cotton undershirt in which he worked and
dined, and reached for the pudding. It was a considerable distance and
he was unable to reach it by merely stretching himself over the table,
so James, unhampered by the rules of etiquette prescribed by a finical
Society, put his knee on the table and buried his thumb in the pudding
as he dragged it toward him by the rim.

Without warning he sat down so hard and so suddenly that his feet flew
up and kicked the table underneath.

"Leggo!" he gurgled.

For answer Bertha took another twist around the stout neck-band of his
orange undergarment.

"I'll learn you rough-necks some manners!" she panted. "I'll git the
respect that's comin' to a lady if I have to clean out this here camp!"

"You quit, now!" He rolled a pair of wild, beseeching eyes around the
table. "Somebudy take her off!"

"Coward--to fight a woman!" She fell back with a section of James's
shirt in one hand, with the other reaching for his hair.

He clapped the crook of his elbow over his ear and started to slide
under the table when the special Providence that looks after Swedes
intervened. A long, plump, shining bull-snake took that particular
moment to slip off one of the log beams and bounce on the bride's head.

She threw herself on Jennings emitting sounds like forty catamounts tied
in a bag. The flying crew jammed in the doorway, burst thr