At present, "the yearling," drinking her execrable coffee in an agony of
embarrassment, weighed heavily on their minds. They would have liked to
rise as a man and ask if there was anything they could do for her. But as
a glance towards the end of the table seemed to increase her discomfiture
tenfold, they did the kindest and for them the most difficult thing and
looked in every direction but Miss Carmichael’s. With a delicacy of
perception that the casual observer might not have given them credit for,
they had refrained from taking seats directly opposite her, or those
immediately on her right, which, as she occupied the last seat at the
table, gave her at least a small degree of seclusion.

As one after another of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a
beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could
obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair
opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a
hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the
cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about "Town," as the case
might be, would take the hint and the chair, leaving the petticoat
separated from the sombreros by a table-land of oilcloth and a range of
four chairs.

But now entered a man who failed to take the hint of the spinning chair.
In fact, he entered the eating-house with the air of one who has dropped
in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally, to eat his breakfast.
He stopped in the doorway, scanned the table with deliberation, and
started to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with something of a
swagger. Some one kicked a chair towards him at the head of the table.
Some one else nearly upset him with one before he reached the middle, and
the Texan remarked, quite audibly, as he passed: