"Oh, Mr. Charles! How can you!" says the Hen, kind of turning away and looking as if what Charley'd said really had made her feel like blushing a little. Then she faced round again and shook hands with Boston--who was so rattled he seemed only about half awake, and done it like a pump--and says to him: "Mr. Charles is a born flatterer if ever there was one, sir, and you must pay no attention whatever to his extravagant words. I only try in my poor way, as occasion presents itself"--she let her voice drop down so it went sort of soft and ketchy--"to mollify some of the harsher asperities of our youthfully strenuous community; to apply, as it were, the touchstone of Boston social standards--the standards that you and I, sir, recognize--to the sometimes too rough ways of our rough little frontier settlement. It is true, though, and I am proud to say it, that the boys do like me--of course Mr. Charles's talk about my being an idol and adored is only his nonsense; and it is true that they always are nice about doing what I ask them to do--as they were just now, when they were naughty and I had to make them behave. "And now, since the formalities have been attended to and we have been introduced properly, and since you and I are fellow-Bostonians and ought to be friendly"--the Hen give him one of them fetching looks of hers--"you must come over to the bar and have a drink on me. And while we are performing this rite of hospitality," says the Hen--pretending not to see the jump he give--"we can discuss your projected lion-hunt: in which, with your permission, I shall take part." Boston give a bigger jump at that; and the Hen says on to him, sort of explaining matters: "You need not fear that I shall not sustain my end of the adventure. As any of the boys here will tell you, I can handle a forty-five or a Winchester about as well as anybody--and big-game hunting really is my forte. Indeed, I may say--using one of our homely but expressive colloquialisms--that when it comes to lion-hunting I am simply hell!"