d the one happy person among us; for supper was
going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding
and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that
springs from I have never been quite sure what--perhaps reversion to the
native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's
uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted
uses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss
Buckner presently wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean,
knowing better than that, eyed him for this conduct in the presence of a
lady. The lively strength of the butter must, I think, have reached all
in the room; at any rate, the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's
eye, now relieved the general silence by observing, chattily:

"Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance."

"If it's too rich for you," croaked the enraged proprietor, "use
axle-dope."

The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve
the decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But
sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless
boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin,
to me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying,
in his Texas idiom,

"Have butter."

He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on "butter" cracked an
octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only
shake her head at the plate.

Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. "She wouldn't choose for
none," he said to the youth, with appalling calm. "Thank yu' most to
death."

"I guess," fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, "it would go slicker
rubbed outside than swallered."

At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house.

"You don't seem to know anything," observed Mr. McLean. "What toy-shop
did you escape from?"

"Wind him up! Wind him up!" said the proprietor, sticking his head in
from the kitchen.

"Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?" screamed the boy, furiously.
"Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!"
And he flounced out with his young boots.

All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked,

"Who's hiring him?"

"The C. Y. outfit," said another.

"Half-circle L.," a third corrected.

"I seen one like him onced," said the first, taking his hat from beneath
his