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He reached backward and drew a shining thing from his pocket, flipped it downward–and the effect was unmistakably different. The gopher leaped and rolled backward and then lay still, and Miss Satterly gave a little, startled scream and jumped quite off the doorstep.

“Don’t yuh see? You couldn’t raise any such a dust with yours. If yuh pack a gun, you always want to pack one that’s ready and willing to do business on short notice. I’ll let yuh have this, if you’re sure it’s safe with yuh. I’d hate to have you shooting yourself accidental.”

Weary raised innocent eyes to her face and polished the gun caressingly with his handkerchief. “Try it once,” he urged.

The schoolma’am was fond of boasting that she never screamed at anything. She had screamed just now, over a foolish little thing, and it goes without saying she was angry with the cause. She did not sit down again beside him, and she did not take the gun he was holding up invitingly to her. She put her hands behind her and stood accusingly before him with the look upon her face which never failed to make sundry small Beckmans and Pilgreens squirm on their benches when she assumed it in school.

“Mr. Davidson”–not Weary Davidson, as she was wont to call him–“you have killed my pet gopher. All summer I have fed him, and he would eat out of my hand.”

Weary cast a jealous eye upon the limp, little animal, searched his heart for remorse and found none. Ornery little brute, to get familiar with his schoolma’am!

“I did not think you could be so wantonly cruel, and I am astonished and–and deeply pained to discover that fatal flaw in your character.”

Weary began to squirm, after the manner of delinquent Beckmans and Pilgreens. One thing he had learned: When the schoolma’am rose to irreproachable English, there was trouble a-brew. It was a sign he had never known to fail.

“I cannot understand the depraved instinct which prompts a man brutally to destroy a life he cannot restore, and which in no way menaces his own–or even interferes with his comfort. You may apologize to me; you may even be sincerely repentant”–the schoolma’am’s tone at this point implied considerable doubt–“but you are powerless to return the life you have so heedlessly taken. You have revealed a low, brutal trait which I had hoped your nature could not harbor, and I am–am deeply shocked and–and grieved.”

Just here a tiny, dry-weather whirlwind swept around the corner, caught ruffled, white apron and blue skirt in its gyrations and, pushing them wickedly aside, gave Weary a brief, delicious glimpse of two small, slippered feet and two distracting ankles. The schoolma’am blushed and retreated to the doorstep, but she did not sit down. She still stood straight and displeased beside him. Evidently she was still shocked and grieved.

Weary tipped his head to one side so that be might look up at her from under his hat-brim. “I’ll get yuh another gopher; six, if yuh say so,” he soothed, “The woods is full of ’em.”

The angry, brown eyes of Miss Satterly swept the barren hills contemptuously. She would not even look at him. “Pray do not inconvenience yourself, Mr. Davidson. It is not the gopher that I care for so much–it is the principle.”

Weary sighed and slid the gun back into his pocket. It seemed to him that Miss Satterly, adorable as she always was, was also rather unreasonable at times. “All right, I’ll get yuh another principle, then.”

“Mr. Davidson,” she said sternly, “you are perfectly odious!”

“Is that something nice, Girlie?” Weary smiled trustfully up at her.

“Odious,” explained the schoolma’am haughtily, “is not something nice. I’m sorry your education has been so neglected. Odious, Mr. Davidson, is a synonym for hateful, obnoxious, repulsive, disagreeable, despicable–“