"The debt and the interest are on the other side."
Hearing them talk so right at the beginning, and knowing the history of the encounter between Texas and the mayor, and the subsequent attempt to kill Hartwell in the street, the Duncans looked on him as Sallie's personal champion. It was doubtless out of this feeling that he belonged peculiarly to Sallie that the Misses Duncan found a great deal to do in the kitchen, although Mrs. Duncan's broad back was left ordinarily to bear such tasks alone, after the ways of daughters the world across.
They were very well acquainted by the time supper was ready, old friends when it was over, and the Misses Duncan were clattering the dishes off. The girls were in a flutter now to have things out of the way, for more company was coming, young men, to be sure, from the ranch above.
A young man was a young man in that country then, no matter what his occupation or whence he came, but these two proved to be exceptions to whom advantages had been given, just as Duncan and his wife, and the Kansas pioneers more than the pioneers of any place in the nation, had made sacrifices to outfit their children for a higher plane. They were the sons of a rancher, and they had been at Lawrence attending the university, also. They were rather boisterous, and unduly familiar in their way of addressing young ladies, Miss McCoy
