overturned the vinegar and pepper casters upon the floor.
Just so might have behaved an overgrown puppy in the presence of a
sleepy, unperturbed chessy-cat, dozing by the fire.

"He ought to be shaken," murmured Blix at the end of her patience.
"Does he think SHE is going to make the first move?"

"Ha, ah'm!" thundered the captain, clearing his throat for the
twentieth time, twirling his mustache, and burying his scarlet face in
an enormous pocket handkerchief.

Five minutes passed and he was still in his place. From time to time
K. D. B. fixed him with a quiet, deliberate look, and resumed her
delicate picking.

"Do you think she knows it's he, now that he's taken off his
marguerites?" whispered Condy.

"Know it?--of course she does! Do you think women are absolutely BLIND,
or so imbecile as men are? And, then, if she didn't think it was he,
she'd go away. And she's so really pretty, too. He ought to thank his
stars alive. Think what a fright she might have been! She doesn't LOOK
thirty-one."

"Huh!" returned Condy. "As long as she SAID she was thirty-one, you
can bet everything you have that she is; that's as true as revealed
religion."

"Well, it's something to have seen the kind of people who write the
personals," said Blix. "I had always imagined that they were kind of
tough."

"You see they are not," he answered. "I told you they were not.
Maybe, however, we have been exceptionally fortunate. At any rate,
these are respectable enough."

"Not the least doubt about that. But why don't he do something, that
captain?" mourned Blix. "Why WILL he act like such a ninny?"

"He's waiting for us to go," said Condy; "I'm sure of it. They'll
never meet so long as we're here. Let's go and give 'em a chance. If
you leave the two alone here, one or the other will HAVE to speak. The
suspense would become too terrible. It would be as though they were on
a desert island."

"But I wanted to SEE them meet," she protested.

"You wouldn't hear what they said."

"But we'd never know if they did meet, and oh--and WHO spoke first?"

"She'll speak first," declared Condy.

"Never!" returned Blix, in an indignant whisper.

"I tell you what. We could go and then come back in five minutes.
I'll forget my stick here. Savvy?"

"You would probably do it anyhow," she told him.

They decided this would be the better course. They got together their
things, and Condy neglected his stick, hanging upon a hook o