"There was a girl standing there--an imported girl with fixings on--
philandering with a croquet maul and amusing herself by watching my
style of encouraging the fruit canning industry.

"I slid off the counter and delivered up my shovel to Uncle Emsley.

"'That's my niece,' says he; 'Miss Willella Learight, down from
Palestine on a visit. Do you want that I should make you acquainted?'

"'The Holy Land,' I says to myself, my thoughts milling some as I
tried to run 'em into the corral. 'Why not? There was sure angels in
Pales--Why, yes, Uncle Emsley,' I says out loud, 'I'd be awful edified
to meet Miss Learight.'

"So Uncle Emsley took me out in the yard and gave us each other's
entitlements.

"I never was shy about women. I never could understand why some men
who can break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark, get
all left-handed and full of perspiration and excuses when they see a
bold of calico draped around what belongs to it. Inside of eight
minutes me and Miss Willella was aggravating the croquet balls around
as amiable as second cousins. She gave me a dig about the quantity of
canned fruit I had eaten, and I got back at her, flat-footed, about
how a certain lady named Eve started the fruit trouble in the first
free-grass pasture--'Over in Palestine, wasn't it?' says I, as easy
and pat as roping a one-year-old.

"That was how I acquired cordiality for the proximities of Miss
Willella Learight; and the disposition grew larger as time passed. She