Hill said when she went to talking about Baptist ministers and aunts in Palomitas he shook so laughing inside he most fell off the box. Except the Mexican padre who belonged there--the one I've spoke of that made a record, and Bishop Lamy had to bounce--and sometimes the French ones from San Juan and the Cañada, who was straight as strings, there wasn't a fire-escape ever showed himself in Palomitas; and as to the ladies of the town--well, the ladies wasn't just what you'd call the aunt kind. It's a cold fact that Palomitas, that year when the end of the track stuck there, was the cussedest town, same as I've said it was, in the whole Territory--and so it was no more'n natural Hill should pretty near bust himself trying to hold in his laughing when the Hen took to talking so off-hand about Palomitas and Baptist ministers and aunts. She felt how he was shaking, and jammed him hard with her elbow to keep him from letting his laugh out and giving her away. * * * * * Hill said they'd got along to Pojuaque by the time the Hen had finished telling about herself, and the fix she was in because she had to wait along with her aunt in Palomitas till her transportation come from Washington--and she just sick to get East and grab her little Willy in her arms. And the old gent was that interested in it all, Hill said, it was a sight to see how he went on. At Pojuaque the coach always made a noon stop, and the team was changed and the passengers got dinner at old man Bouquet's. He was a Frenchman, old man Bouquet was; but he'd been in the Territory from 'way back, and he'd got a nice garden behind his house and things fixed up French style. His strongest hold was his wine-making. He made a first-class drink, as drinks of that sort go; and, for its kind, it was pretty strong. As his cooking was first-class too, Hill's passengers--and the other folks that stopped for grub there--always wanted to make a good long halt. Hill said it turned out the old gent knowed how to talk French, and that made old man Bouquet extra obliging--and he set up a rattling good dinner and fetched out some of the wine he said he was in the habit of keeping for his own drinking, seeing he'd got somebody in the house for once who really could tell the difference between good and bad. He fixed up a table out in the garden--aside of that queer tree, all growed together, he thought so much of--and set down with 'em himself; and Hill said it was one of the pleasantest parties he'd ever been at in all his born days.