Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/132

 called it reporting, and laughed foolishly and perspired some more because she thought he was embarrassed at talking to her.

But she was smiling quite kindly and not paying attention to what he said. He had a notion to make her, and at the same time show that he was not rattled, by telling her that he had already taken mental note of her dark green street-dress and the Paris hat with the dash of red in it which was becoming, and even of the small calf-skin shoes, a pair which surely were made expressly for her; but Lawrence had begun to talk.

"You see," he said, officiously, "Mrs. Wells is tired of having these shop-keepers bunco her all the time, and she thought she'd make an example of this shoemaker."

Mrs. Wells laughed and looked more womanly when she laughed than when she smiled. Linton wanted to say, "I don't care to hear about your old shoes."

Then her husband spoke up, looking at Linton in a way he did not fancy, "You may say she thought she owed it to our friends to expose these people's methods—yes, you say that; say it wasn't the money, but she