that he looked like a badger, and other things that an Injun wouldn’t feel was a compliment.”  Red leaned back and roared.  “I can see him now putting his hands down so careful, and turning back every once in awhile to cuss me.  Turned out that it was his cayuse, too.  Feller that sold it to me had stole it from him.  I oughtn’t to laugh over it, but I can’t help but snicker when I think how I did that Injun.”

Generally speaking, Miss Mattie had a lively sense of humour, but the joke of this was lost on her.  Her education had been that getting shot was far from funny.

“Why, I should have thought you would have died, Will!”

“What!  For a little crack in the leg!” cried Red, with some impatience.  “You people must quit easy in this country.  Die nothin’.  One of our boys came along and took us to camp, and we was up and doing again in no time.  ’Course, Black Wolf has a game leg for good, but the worst that’s stuck to me is a yank or two of rheumatism in the rainy season.  I paid Wolf for his cayuse,” he finished shamefacedly.  “I had the laugh on him anyhow.”

Miss Mattie told him she thought that was noble of him, which tribute Red took as medicine, and shifted the subject with speed, to practical affairs.  He asked Miss Mattie how much money she had and how she managed to make out.  Now, it was one of the canons of good manners in Fairfield not to speak of material matters—­perhaps because there was so little material matter in the community, but Miss Mattie, doomed to a thousand irksome petty economies, had often longed for a sympathetic ear, to pour into it a good honest complaint of hating to do this and that.  She could not exactly go this far with Cousin Will, but she could say that it was pretty hard to get along, and give some details.  She felt that she knew him so very well, in those few hours!  Red heard with nods of assent.  He had scented the conditions at once.

“It ain’t any fun, skidding on the thin ice,” said he, when they had concluded the talk.  “I’ve had to count the beans I put in the pot, and it made me hate arithmetic worse than when I went over yonder to school.  Well, them days have gone by for you, Mattie.”  He reached down and pulling out a green roll, slapped it on the centre table.  “Blow that in, and limber up, and remember that there’s more behind it.”

Miss Mattie’s pride rose at a leap.

“Will!” she said, “I hope you don’t think I’ve told you this to get money from you?”

He leaned forward, put his hand on her shoulder and held her eyes with a sudden access of sternness and authority.

“And I hope, Mattie,” said he, “that you don’t think that I think anything of the kind?”

The cousins stared into each other’s eyes for a full minute.  Then Miss Mattie spoke.  “No, Will,” said she, “I don’t believe you do.”

“I shouldn’t think I did,” retorted Red.  “What in thunder would I do with all that money?  Why, good Lord, girl, I could paper your house with ten-dollar bills—­now you try to fly them green kites, like I tell you.”