In vain the amorous Chet protested in a voice which the instrument drowned.
Perceiving which the artful young lady opened her blue eyes mildly and said:-- "I reckon it IS so; it DOES kind of prevent you hearing what you don't want to hear." "You know well enough what I mean," said the youth gloomily.

"And that ain't all that folks say.

They allow that you're doin' a heap too much correspondence with that Californian rough that killed Tom Jeffcourt over there." "Do they ?" said the young lady, with a slight curl of her pretty lip.
"Then perhaps they allow that if it wasn't for me he wouldn't be sending a hundred dollars a month to Aunt Martha ?" "Yes," said the fatuous youth; "but they allow he killed Tom for his money.

And they do say it's mighty queer doin's in yo' writin' religious letters to him, and Tom your own cousin." "Oh, they tell those lies HERE, do they?
But do they say anything about how, when the same lies were told over in California, the lawyer they've got over there, called Colonel Starbottle,--a Southern man too,--got up and just wrote to Aunt Martha that she'd better quit that afore she got prosecuted?
They didn't tell you that, did they, Mister Chester Brooks ?" But here the unfortunate Brooks, after the fashion of all jealous lovers, deserted his allies for his fair enemy.

"I don't cotton to what THEY say, Sally, but you DO write to him, and I don't see what you've got to write about--you and him.