your old one went?"
she repeated.

"I turned it over on a friend of mine," drawled Jim, who meant he had
deftly reversed it on himself. "It's a poor shirt that won't work both
ways."

"Ain't there nuthin' more I kin mend?" she asked.

"Not unless it's somethin' of Doc's down to your lovely little home."

"Oh, I ain't agoin' to go, if that's what you're drivin' at," she
answered, as she swiftly assembled the soiled utensils of the cuisine.
"I'll tidy up this here pig-pen if it takes a week, and you kin hop up
and come down easy."

"I wouldn't have you go for nothing," drawled Jim, squirming with
abnormal impatience to be up and doing. "Angel's visits are comin'
fewer and fewer in a box every day."

"That's bogus," answered the lady. "I sense your oilin' me over. You
git up and go and git a fresh pail of water."

"I'd like to," Jim said, convincingly, "but the only time I ever broke
my arm was when I went out for a bucket of water before breakfast."

"You ain't agoin' is what you mean, with all them come-a-long-way-round
excuses," she conjectured. "You've got the name of bein' the
laziest-jointed, mos' shiftless man into camp."

"Wal," drawled the helpless miner, "a town without a horrible example
is deader than the spikes in Adam's coffin. And the next best thing to
being a livin' example is to hang around the house where one of 'em
stays in his bunk all mornin'."

"If that's another of them underhanded hints of your'n, you might as
well save your breath," she replied. "I'll go and git the water
myself, fer them dishes is goin' to git cleaned."

She took up the bucket at once. Outside, the sounds of some one
scooting rapidly away brought to Jim a thought of Keno's recently
demonstrated presence of mind.

Cautiously sitting up in the berth, so soon as Miss Doc had disappeared
with the pail, he hurriedly drew on his boots. A sound of returning
footsteps came to his startled ears. He leaped back up in the bunk,
boots and all, and covered himself with the blanket, to the startlement
of the timid little chap, who was sitting there to watch developments.
Both drew down as Miss Doc reappeared in the door.

"I might as well tote a kettleful, too," she said, and taking that
soot-plated article from its hook in the chimney she once more started
for the spring.

This time, like a guilty burglar, old Jim crept out to the door. Then
with one quick resolve he caught up his trousers, and snatching his
pal