nly and shoot her with a pistol. He must have
loved her desperately; and impulsive lovers are always blindly
jealous.

Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. And then Tildy
rather hoped that he would not shoot at her, for she was always loyal
to Aileen; and she did not want to overshadow her friend.

At 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Seeders came in.
There were no customers at the tables. At the back end of the
restaurant Tildy was refilling the mustard pots and Aileen was
quartering pies. Mr. Seeders walked back to where they stood.

Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon
against her heart. A red hair-bow was in her hair; she wore Venus's
Eighth Avenue badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging silver
symbolic heart.

Mr. Seeders was flushed and embarrassed. He plunged one hand into
his hip pocket and the other into a fresh pumpkin pie.

"Miss Tildy," said he, "I want to apologise for what I done the other
evenin'. Tell you the truth, I was pretty well tanked up or I
wouldn't of done it. I wouldn't do no lady that a-way when I was
sober. So I hope, Miss Tildy, you'll accept my 'pology, and believe
that I wouldn't of done it if I'd known what I was doin' and hadn't
of been drunk."

With this handsome plea Mr. Seeders backed away, and departed,
feeling that reparation had been made.

But behind the convenient screen Tildy had thrown herself flat upon
a table among the butter chips and the coffee cups, and was sobbing
her heart out--out and back again to the grey plain wherein travel
they with blunt noses and hay-coloured hair. From her knot she had
torn the red hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she
despised utterly; she had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and
prophetic prince who might have set the clocks going and the pages to
running in fairyland. But the kiss had been maudlin and unmeant; the
court had not stirred at the false alarm; she must forevermore remain
the Sleeping Beauty.

Yet not all was lost. Aileen's arm was around her; and Tildy's red
hand groped among the butter chips till it found the warm clasp of
her friend's.

"Don't you fret, Til," said Aileen, who did not understand entirely.
"That turnip-faced little clothespin of a Seeders ain't worth it. He
ain't anything of a gentleman or he wouldn't ever of apologised."

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUR MILLION***

******* This file should be named