e blue shade as the china dog's on the right-hand corner
of your Aunt Ellen's mantelpiece. He took things as they came, and I
never felt any hostility against him. I let him live, and so did
others.

"But what does this Willie do but coax his heart out of his boots and
lose it to Myra Allison, the liveliest, brightest, keenest, smartest,
and prettiest girl in San Augustine. I tell you, she had the blackest
eyes, the shiniest curls, and the most tantalizing--Oh, no, you're
off--I wasn't a victim. I might have been, but I knew better. I kept
out. Joe Granberry was It from the start. He had everybody else
beat a couple of leagues and thence east to a stake and mound. But,
anyhow, Myra was a nine-pound, full-merino, fall-clip fleece, sacked
and loaded on a four-horse team for San Antone.

"One night there was an ice-cream sociable at Mrs. Colonel
Spraggins', in San Augustine. We fellows had a big room up-stairs
opened up for us to put our hats and things in, and to comb our hair
and put on the clean collars we brought along inside the sweat-bands
of our hats--in short, a room to fix up in just like they have
everywhere at high-toned doings. A little farther down the hall
was the girls' room, which they used to powder up in, and so forth.
Downstairs we--that is, the San Augustine Social Cotillion and
Merrymakers' Club--had a stretcher put down in the parlor where our
dance was going on.

"Willie Robbins and me happened to be up in our--cloak-room, I believe
we called it--when Myra Allison skipped through the hall on her way
down-stairs from the girls' room. Willie was standing before the
mirror, deeply interested in smoothing down the blond grass-plot on
his head, which seemed to give him lots of trouble. Myra was always
full of life and devilment. She stopped and stuck her head in our
door. She certainly was good-looking. But I knew how Joe Granberry
stood with her. So did Willie; but he kept on ba-a-a-ing after her
and following her around. He had a system of persistence that didn't
coincide with pale hair and light eyes.

"'Hello, Willie!' says Myra. 'What are you doing to yourself in the
glass?'

"'I'm trying to look fly,' says Willie.

"'Well, you never could _be_ fly,' says Myra, with her special laugh,
which was the provokingest sound I ever heard except the rattle of an
empty canteen against my saddle-horn.

"I looked around at Willie after Myra had gone. He had a kind of a
lily-white look on him which seem