[41]

"Well, of course she did!" she exclaimed heatedly. "She only asked you to catch the fish didn't she—not to kill it?"

The bachelor stared at her for a moment without speaking. Then he got up silently and walked over to the window.

"I suppose," he remarked after a long pause, apparently addressing the front lawn or the blue heavens, "that it's that same sort of logic that incites a woman to play for a man until she catches him—and then throw him overboard. O Lord," he continued, glancing at the sky devoutly, "why couldn't you have made them nice and sensible?"

The widow took up her book with disdain.

"'Nice and sensible'" she repeated[42] witheringly. "Just think how it would feel to be called 'nice and sensible!' I wish," she added, turning to her novel with an air of boredom, "that you would go and—talk to Ethel Manners."

[42]

The bachelor eyed her narrowly.

"I guess I will," he said finally. "She seems more interesting—now that you've explained her."

The widow stopped in the middle of a paragraph and looked up.

"And by Jove!" went on the bachelor reminiscently, turning to the window again, "she did look dreamy in a sunbonnet and that little short skirt this morning. She has adorable feet, you know."

The widow closed her book with a sharp snap, keeping her fingers between the pages.[43]

[43]

"I know, Mr. Travers; but how did you know?"

"I looked at them," confessed the bachelor frankly, "and her ankles—"

The widow's mouth closed in a straight line.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Travers," she remarked frigidly, "that you are not a fit companion for a young girl like Ethel."

"I'm not equal to her," grinned the bachelor.

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