re than irony to discourage Mr. Penrose, however, and he
insisted petulantly:

"Come on back here, Cone! I'll explain just how Wallie jumped that steer
and went to the ground with him. It's worth listening to twice."

Twice! Mr. Cone had heard it more times than he had fingers and toes.

"The telephone's ringing," he pleaded.

"Go answer it, then; looks like you'd want to learn something!"

Miss Macpherson had heard the story an even greater number of times than
Mr. Cone, but now she urged Mr. Penrose to repeat it, and he did so with
such spirit and so vividly that she shuddered almost continuously
through the telling. He concluded by asserting emphatically that if it
had not been for his foresight in providing himself with field-glasses,
the steer would have been running over the flat with Aunt Lizzie empaled
on its horns like a naturalist's butterfly, before any one could have
prevented it.

Mr. Appel opined, when Mr. Penrose had finished, that "Canby made a poor
showing."

"I could have done as well myself if I had been able to get there." He
added speculatively: "I suppose Canby and Miss Spenceley are engaged by
now--or married. Wallie hasn't mentioned it in his letters, has he?"

Miss Macpherson replied in the negative.

"He might not, anyway," remarked Mrs. Appel. "Helene was a nice girl,
and attractive, but I could see that she did not interest him."

Mrs. Budlong, who had one eye closed trying to thread a needle without
her glasses, observed succinctly:

"Men are funny."

She intended to qualify her statement by saying that some are funnier
than others, only, before she had time to do so, an exclamation from
Miss Macpherson attracted her attention. Following Miss Macpherson's
unbelieving stare she saw Helene and Wallie getting out of the motor-bus
with a certain air which her experienced eye recognized as "married."

Mrs. Budlong specialized in detecting newly wedded people and she was
seldom mistaken. Her cleverness along this line sometimes amounted to
clairvoyancy, but, in this instance, no one needed to be supernaturally
gifted to recognize the earmarks, for no man could look so radiantly
happy as Wallie unless he had inherited a million dollars--or married
the girl he wanted.

Miss Mary Macpherson threw her arms about her nephew's neck and kissed
him with an impetuosity seemingly incompatible with a lady who wore a
high starched collar in summer, and the others welcomed him with a
sincerity