d aloud, "one doesn't consider men as
individuals--it's merely a question of feet. She took me for a train
robber; and I danced with her about forty times, that night, and took
her over to supper and we whacked up on our chicken salad because there
was only one dish for the two of us--oh, mamma!"
He pulled off the saddle with a preoccupied air and rubbed Glory down
mechanically. After that he went over and sat down on the oats' box
and smoked two cigarettes while he pondered many things.
He stood up and thoughtfully surveyed himself, brushed sundry bright
sorrel hairs from his coat sleeves, stooped and tried to pinch creases
into the knees of his trousers, which showed symptoms of "bagging." He
took off his hat and polished it with his sleeve he had just brushed so
carefully, pinched four big dimples in the crown, turned it around
three times for critical inspection, placed it upon his head at a
studiously unstudied angle, felt anxiously at his neck-gear and slapped
Glory affectionately upon the rump--and came near getting kicked into
eternity. Then he swung off up the path, softly whistling "In the
good, old summer-time." An old hen, hovering her chicks in the shade
of the hay-rack, eyed him distrustfully and cried "k-r-_r-r-r_" in a
shocked tone that sent her chickens burrowing deeper under her feathers.
Miss Satterly had changed her pink kimono for a white shirt-waist and
had fluffed her hair into a smooth coil on the top of her head. Weary
thought she looked very nice. She could make excellent lemonade, he
discovered, and she proved herself altogether different from what the
messages she sent him had led him to expect. Weary wondered, until he
became too interested to think about it.
Presently, without quite knowing how it came about, he was telling her
all about the race. Miss Satterly helped him reckon his
winnings--which was not easy to do, since he had been offered all sorts
of odds and had accepted them all with a recklessness that was
appalling. While her dark head was bent above the piece of paper, and
her pencil was setting down figures with precise little jabs, he
watched her. He quite forgot the messages he had received from her
through the medium of the Happy Family, and he quite forgot that women
could hurt a man.
"Mr. Davidson," she announced severely, when the figures had all been
dabbed upon the paper, "You ought to have lost. It would be a lesson
to you. I haven't quite figured
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