PAINTED ROCK
are difficulties with the hash, boys,—and she consoled me by sayin' that any one of the men there would be just as much a tender-foot in Texas; and I said, 'You bet, Lady Caroline. I could teach 'em something thar.' And I yearned to be rich and a lord (I own it, boys, and there ain't no need to laff), for I wanted to say to her, 'Be mine,' and I darn't. And next day I goes to Cheviot and tells him all about it. 'I see the difficulties, Cheviot,' I says, and he owns there was difficulties. And it appears the chief difficulty was that the pore gal had to marry a duke from somewhere, and Cheviot owned the duke was a no good galoot. But, as he said, the gal had payssed her word, and there warn't no good thinkin' of it. So I tho't as little of it as I could, and I might hev stayed a while longer if it hadn't bin' that the first ole duchess that spoke to me took a horrid fancy to me. She was all clothes and paint and powder, so that no man ever saw the real duchess but only the faked outside. And one night she took me by the hand, she bein' very old, and said she thought I was the nicest young man she ever see, and
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