as.

"Oh, yes--just so--I see," he would say promptly. "You just got lost
on the prairie. And you 've been stopping a few days with Steve."

As if it were nothing! Such ready belief and general
inconsequentiality bothered Janet. She did not know, of course, that
Jonas was hardly the sort of a Texan to feel comfortable in having a
woman stand before him in the defensive, stating her case. Upon her
first appearance he had concealed his surprise and rallied nobly to the
courtesies of the occasion; it was sufficient that he was in the
presence of the fair. Having heard enough to get the facts of her
adventure and grasp her present situation, it was hardly in him to play
the part of the unconvinced and give her a hearing through the
corroborating details--it was too inquisitorial for him. Suspicion?
He would have felt vitally impeached. He could not stand judicially;
he would have knocked down the man that did it. For this reason, while
he manifested sufficient interest, he escaped from his position by
finding casual employment; he examined the skillet, looked into the
provision box, and presently set about getting his supper, which, he
insisted, he was perfectly capable of doing. Janet persevered with her
story. He kept up his interest, making a mere anecdote out of her tale
and mitigating the atmosphere with the sound of pots and kettles.

"Well, now; if that don't beat all---- Naturally---- Just what would
happen--" Such was the tenor of his remarks. As if nothing more need
really be said.

To Janet, his too ready acceptance was peculiarly unsatisfying.

"And then," he remarked, just as she was coming to it, "I bet you
walked right round in a circle."

She wished most heartily that she could have replied, "Oh, no," and
explained that that was n't the way of it at all. She felt that her
whole story must seem to him an easily concocted, and a merely
necessary fiction. But as that was exactly what did happen she had to
accept this part of it from him and do her best with other details.
She wished he would pay more strict attention.

"And so," she finally ended, "as Mr. Brown went away just a while ago
to get my horse, I was rather frightened when I heard somebody coming.
I suppose I surprised you too."

"Well, yes; I must say you did, sort of. But of course when I heard
that noise I knew something was bound to come of it. But I managed to
save my appetite."

"There is n't very much left to eat,"