Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/328

 his brown eyes than any man that ever made a crowded house believe a poor show was a good one. He was the best ever, I assure you, and if Little Eva hadn't butted in and asked him to come and hear her rehearse dying I reckon he'd have won a few plighted troths anyway. I shall always believe he had her clinging to the ropes when Eva made the fatal stab.

"'Do you know those people in the second cabin?' demanded her lordship, in an eighty-two degrees north kind of a voice.

"Tib groaned and tore his brown hair, but bravely admitted he owned them. 'I'm only a showman,' he cried. 'The vase is broken. I've got the bell and it's back to the low stables.'

"Well, he felt mighty bad over that woman. It wa'n't her titled pa, or the poorly fitting coat of arms; it was just a case of She. When he was talking to her he forgot he was only a showman. He believed all about the old, ivy-covered manse and the hounds. Why, I even heard him call the pups by name. And his father, I reckon, never saw anything more blue-blooded than a sheep-dog.

"But Eva's début in fracturing his dream thoroughly awakened him, and best of all restored him to me. 'My old heart got foolish, boy,' he remarked, as we resumed our chumming, 'but it's beating all right now. I never felt soft on a woman before.