"HE was responsible for that, then, was he?" broke in Theron, with
contracted brows.

"Why, don't you make any effort to find out anything at ALL?" she asked
pertly enough, but with such obvious good-nature that he could not but
have pleasure in her speech. "Why, of course he did it! Who else did you
suppose?"

"Well," said the young minister, despondently, "if he's as much against
me as all that, I might as well hang up my fiddle and go home."

Sister Soulsby gave a little involuntary groan of impatience. She
bent forward, and, lifting her eyes, rolled them at him in a curve of
downward motion which suggested to his fancy the image of two eagles in
a concerted pounce upon a lamb.

"My friend," she began, with a new note of impressiveness in her voice,
"if you'll pardon my saying it, you haven't got the spunk of a mouse.
If you're going to lay down, and let everybody trample over you just as
they please, you're right! You MIGHT as well go home. But now here, this
is what I wanted to say to you: Do you just keep your hands off these
next few days, and leave this whole thing to me. I'll pull it into
shipshape for you. No--wait a minute--don't interrupt now. I have taken
a liking to you. You've got brains, and you've got human nature in you,
and heart. What you lack is SABE--common-sense. You'll get that, too, in
time, and meanwhile I'm not going to stand by and see you cut up and fed
to the dogs for want of it. I'll get you through this scrape, and put
you on your feet again, right-side-up-with care, because, as I said, I
like you. I like your wife, too, mind. She's a good, honest little soul,
and she worships the very ground you tread on. Of course, as long as
people WILL marry in their teens, the wrong people will get yoked up
together. But that's neither here nor there. She's a kind sweet little
body, and she's devoted to you, and it isn't every intellectual man
that gets even that much. But now it's a go, is it? You promise to keep
quiet, do you, and leave the whole show absolutely to me? Shake hands on
it."

Sister Soulsby had risen, and stood now holding out her hand in a frank,
manly fashion. Theron looked at the hand, and made mental notes that
there were a good many veins discernible on the small wrist, and that
the forearm seemed to swell out more than would have been expected in a
woman producing such a general effect of leanness. He caught the
shine of a thin bracelet-band of gold under the sleeve. A de