The hand immediately became limp, the grasp conventional.

"I was mad, miss," Jeff blundered on, "and I don't see how you believed
it--knowing everything ez you do."

"How knowing everything as I do?" asked Miss Mayfield coldly.

"Why, about the quail, and about the bag!"

"Oh," said Miss Mayfield.

Five minutes later, Yuba Bill nearly ditched his coach in his utter
amazement at an apparently simple spectacle--a tall, good-looking young
fellow, in a red shirt and high boots, carrying a bag on his back, and
beside him, hanging confidentially on his arm, a small, slight, pretty
girl in a red cloak. "Nothing mean about her, eh, Bill?" said as
admiring box-passenger. "Young couple, I reckon, just out from the
States."

"No!" roared Bill.

"Oh, well, his sweetheart, I reckon?" suggested the box-passenger.

"Nary time!" growled Bill. "Look yer! I know 'em both, and they knows
me. Did ye notiss she never drops his arm when she sees the stage
comin', but kinder trapes along jist the same? Had they been courtin',
she'd hev dropped his arm like pizen, and walked on t'other side the
road."