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 to prove it. How's windmills going? Is the wind sufficient to send 'em round? I'm thinkin' of havin' one fixed over to my ranch, and I'll grow roses agin' Keno at his park."

That was the end of the trouble. But when talk had got so far it was bound to go further. And it did. The élite of Painted Rock looked shy at poor Mrs. Habersham, who apparently never got as much as a hint upon the scandal. At any rate she never wilted under the public gaze, and went about as gaily as ever. Gedge talked to me about her, and talked a little gloomily.

"One woman is all I care to understand," he said, "and I own freely after twenty-five years of matrimony that Mrs. Gedge is frequent as hard to fathom as Ginger Gillett when he starts bluffin' at poker. He's the best amatoor at kyards in the county, and Pillsbury owns it, as I do. For all I know Mis' Habersham may be bad down to bed-rock, or she may be no more than a pretty fool. There's times I put up one hypotheesis, and there's times I argue from the other. Women are shorely sad enigmas, and apt to cause woe. If Habersham