red anything so
beautiful and so terrifying.

Maria was certainly fair to look upon. A buxom, rosy-cheeked lass,
something above the average hight of girls, and showing the Klegg
blood in her broad chest and heavy, full curves. She was dressed in the
hollyhock fashion of country girls of those days, with an exuberance of
bright colors, but which Shorty thought the hight of refined fashion. He
actually trembled at what the next words would be from those full, red
lips, that never seemed to open except in raillery and mocking.

"Well, ain't you goin' to shake hands with me? What are you mad about?"

"Mad? Me mad? What in the world've I to be mad about?" thought Shorty,
as he changed his hat to his left hand, and put forth shamedly a huge
paw, garnished with red hair and the dust of the march. It seemed so
unfit to be touched by her white, plump hand. She gave him a hearty
grasp, which reassured him a little, for there was nothing in it, at
least, of the derision which seemed to ring in every note of her voice
and laughter.

"Girls," she called, "come up and be introduced. This is Mr. Corpril
Elliott, Si's best friend and partner. I call him Mr. Fly-by-night,
because he got his dander up about something or nothin', and skipped out
one night without so much's sayin'--"

"O, Maria, come off. Cheese it. Dry up," said Si impatiently. "Take us
somewhere where we kin git somethin' to eat. Your tongue's hung in the
middle, and when you start to talkin' you forgit everything else. I'm
hungrier'n a bear, and so's Shorty."

An impulse of anger flamed up in Shorty's heart. How dared Si speak that
way to such a peerless creature? How could he talk to her as if she were
some ordinary girl?

"O, of course, you're hungry," Maria answered. "Never knowed you when
you wasn't. You're worse'n a Shanghai chicken--eat all day and be hungry
at night. But I expect you are really hungry this time. Come on. We'll
go right up to Cousin Marthy's. I sent word that you was in town, and
they're gittin' ready for you. I seen a dray-load o' provisions start up
that way. Come on, girls. Cousin Marthy, bein's you're engaged and Si's
engaged, you kin walk with him. The rest o' you fall in behind, and I'll
bring up the rear, as Si'd say, with Mr. Fly-by-night, and hold on to
him so that he sha'n't skip again."

"Me run away," thought Shorty, as they walked along. "Hosses couldn't
drag me away. I only hope that house is 10 miles off."

Unfortunately