Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/321

 She pointed and pantomimed, speechless in her mirth, tears streaming from her eyes as if the vapors which had vexed Peck's orbs still lingered in the room.

She wore it out presently, and braced up, standing slim and flushed, graceful, strong and altogether lovely in a young man's eyes, sombrero in her hand, her sun-tinted hair coiled quaintly around her head.

"What on earth did you clean them all at once for, Ned?" she wanted to know. "Or did you do it? Of course not, with one hand. It must have been Peck. But why? Were you expecting company?"

Rawlins stood by grinning, feeling himself cornered for a reasonable explanation. He wished he had put the pan under the bed when he had come in for a minute after Mrs. Peck's departure to take off Peck's gun. And seeing the gun lying on the cot where he had thrown it, his lips pressed back in that foolish-looking tomcat grin, the little Scottish tune issuing faintly, very faintly and dispiritedly, indeed, between his teeth, the answer came.

"It was done on a little bet this morning between Peck and me," he said. "Peck bet me his gun he could clean all the onions without shedding a tear, and he lost."