"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. Jule Jeffcourt says that when you got
religion at Louisville during the revival, you felt you had a call to
write and save sinners, and you did that as your trial and probation,
but that since you backslided and are worldly again, and go to parties,