The Big-Town Round-Up, page 139 by William MacLeod Raine
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his hands had not been so big and red and freckled. Also he had an uncomfortable suspicion that his tow hair was tousled and uncombed in spite of his attempts at home to plaster it down.
He declined sugar and cream because for some reason it seemed easier to say "No'm" than "Yes," though he always took both with tea. And he disgraced himself by scalding his tongue and failing to suppress the pain. Finally the plate, with his muffin, carefully balanced on his knee, from some devilish caprice plunged over the precipice to the carpet and the bit of china broke.
Whereupon Kitty gently reproved him, as was her wifely duty.
"I ain't no society fellow," the distressed puncher explained to his hostess, tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead.
Beatrice had already guessed as much, but she did not admit it to Johnnie. She and Kitty smiled at each other in that common superiority which their sex gives them to any mere man upon such an occasion. For Mrs. John Green, though afternoon tea was to her too an alien custom, took to it as a duck does to water.
Miss Whitford handed Johnnie an envelope. "Would it be too much trouble for you to take a letter to Mr. Lindsay?" she asked very casually as they rose to go.
The bridegroom said he was much obliged and he would be plumb tickled to take a message to Clay.
When Clay read the note his blood glowed. It was a characteristic two-line apology:
I've been a horrid little prig, Clay [so the letter ran]. Won't you come over to-morrow and go riding with me?
CHAPTER XXVI
A LOCKED GATE
Colin Whitford had been telling Clay the story of how a young cowpuncher had snatched Beatrice from under the hoofs of a charging steer. His daughter and the Arizonan listened without comment.
"I've always thought I'd like to explain to that young man I didn't mean to insult him by offering money for saving Bee. But you see he didn't give me