answer,
of course, fit only for a Peavey.

"At all events, you'll not keep it long." The words were Peavey enough,
but the voice was rather curiously Lansdale.

"I have made as little effort to keep it as I did to acquire it," I
said, "but it stays on, and I've a notion it will stay on as long as Jim
and I are uncorrupted. But it shan't inconvenience you," I added
brightly, in time to forestall an imminent other "Nonsense!"

Being thus neatly thwarted, she looked over my shoulder and bent to her
oars, for we had again drifted toward the troubled waters of the dam.

"I warned you--if you listened to me," I reminded her.

"Oh, I've not been listening--only thinking."

"Of course, and you were disbelieving. It's high time you put us ashore.
I want to believe, and I want not to be drowned. So does Jim,--_both_ of
'em."

She pointed the boat to our landing, and as she leaned her narrow
shoulders far back she shot me; one swift look. But I could see much
farther into the water that floated us.

CHAPTER XXV

THE CASE OF FATTY BUDLOW

Lest Miss Katharine Lansdale seem unduly formidable, I should, perhaps,
say that I appeared to be alone in finding her so. Little Arcadians of
my own sex younger than myself--and, if I may suggest it, less
discerning--were not only not menaced, but she invited them with a
cordiality in which the keenest eye among them could detect no flaw.
Miss Lansdale's mother had also pleased the masculine element of the
town at her first progress through its pleasant streets. But Miss
Caroline, despite many details of dress and manner that failed
interestingly to corroborate the fact, was an old woman, and one whose
way of life made her difficult of comprehension to the Little Country.
Socially and industrially, one might say, she did not fit the scheme of
things as the town had been taught to conceive it. Whereas, her daughter
was a person readily to be understood in all parts of the world where
men have eyes--as well by the homekeeping as by the travelled. Eustace
Eubanks, more or less a man of the world by virtue of that adventurous
trip to the Holy Land, understood her at one glance, as did Arthur
Updyke, who had fared abroad to the college of pharmacy and knew things.
But she was also lucid as crystal to G. Brown and Creston Fancett, whose
knowledge of the outside world was somewhat affected by their experience
of it, which was nothing. To all seven of the ages was this woman
comprehe