er-out.

"Over to Watts's last fall," Mrs. Luella rambled on, slicing ham the
while at a great rate, "they had bun sandwiches, and in the top of ary
bun there was a toothpick stickin' up. If you've got toothpicks enough
about the place, we might try it. It looks real tasty."

"Mrs. Jenkins," Lem broke in, "do you know Bub Quinn?"

"No; nor I don't want to," Luella answered curtly.

"Why not?"

"He's too handy with his shooting-irons to suit my taste."

Then, resuming the thread of her discourse: "You don't think, now,
you've got toothpicks enough? They'd set things off real nice." But Lem
had departed.

"I s'pose he's kind o' flustered with givin' their first dance," she
said apologetically to her coadjutor among the sandwiches.

Lem was a great favorite with Mrs. Luella. She liked him better than she
did Joe. She was one of the few people who could, at a glance, tell the
two brothers apart. She always spoke of Lem as the "little chap," though
he was in fact precisely of a height with his brother; and she gave as
the reason for the preference, that "the little chap wasn't a ramper."
Unfortunately for Lem, perhaps, she was right. He was not a ramper.

As Lem stepped out into the other room, the caller-out was shouting,
"Promen-_ade_ all--you know where!" The sets were breaking up, and Joe
with his best manner was leading his partner to a seat. The face had
vanished from the window. Bub Quinn was striding across the room, and
now planted himself in front of the recreant pair.

"You're to come with me, Aggy," he growled.

"Pray don't mention it!" cried Joe, relinquishing the girl to Quinn with
a mocking reverence.

Shrugging her shoulders, and pouting, Aggy moved away with her captor;
not, however, without a parting glance over her shoulder at Joe. The two
brothers met at the kitchen-door.

"I say, Joe," Lem begged, "don't dance with that girl again."

"And why not!"

"You wouldn't ask why not if you had seen that ruffian's face at the
window."

"Didn't I see it, though?" scoffed Joe, in high spirits, and Lem knew
that he had blundered.

A new caller-out had taken the floor, and was shouting, "Seventeen to
twenty-four, get on the floor and dance!"

The pauses are short at a ranch dance, for each man, having a right in
only one dance out of three or four, is eager for his turn. The women on
this particular occasion might have been glad of a rest, for there were
only ten of them to satisfy the demands