they were as good as
anybody--just as good, without reading or writing or anything. The very
next day some of the laziest and dirtiest where we live had a new strut,
like the monkey when you put a red flannel cap on him--only the monkey
doesn't push ladies off the sidewalk. And that state of mind, you know,"
said Miss La Heu, softening down from wrath to her roguish laugh, "isn't
the right state of mind for racial progress! But I wasn't thinking of
this. You know he has appointed one of them to office here."

A light entered my brain: John Mayrant had a position at the Custom
House! John Mayrant was subordinate to the President's appointee! She
hadn't changed the subject so violently, after all.

I came squarely at it. "And so you wish him to resign his position?"

But I was ahead of her this time.

"The Chief of Customs?" she wonderingly murmured.

I brought her up with me now. "Did Miss Josephine St. Michael say it was
over his left eye?"

The girl instantly looked everything she thought. "I believe you were
present!" This was her highly comprehensive exclamation, accompanied
also by a blush as splendidly young as John Mayrant had been while he
so stammeringly brought out his wishes concerning the cake. I at once
decided to deceive her utterly, and therefore I spoke the exact truth:
"No, I wasn't present."

They did their work, my true words; the false impression flowed out of
them as smoothly as California claret from a French bottle.

"I wonder who told you?" my victim remarked. "But it doesn't really
matter. Everybody is bound to know it. You surely were the last person
with him in the churchyard?"

"Gracious!" I admitted again with splendidly mendacious veracity. "How
we do find each other out in Kings Port!"

It was not by any means the least of the delights which I took in the
company of this charming girl that sometimes she was too much for
me, and sometimes I was too much for her. It was, of course, just the
accident of our ages; in a very few years she would catch up, would
pass, would always be too much for me. Well, to-day it was happily my
turn; I wasn't going to finish lunch without knowing all she, at any
rate, could tell me about the left eye and the man in bed.

"Forty years ago," I now, with ingenuity, remarked, "I suppose it would
have been pistols."

She assented. "And I like that better--don't you--for gentlemen?"

"Well, you mean that fists are--"

"Yes," she finished for me.