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 "I have told Mr. Ogle that I am very susceptible to flattery. I provide myself with it wherever I can, and I am so childlike I relish it—even from the untruthful."

"I bet you hear a plenty!" Tinker exclaimed. Then, over his amber glass, he looked at her with a beaming admiration and said in a tone of amiable inquiry: "Widow, I expect?"

To the three sensitive young men the very air seemed shocked by the impact of so grossly naïve a personality; but the response of the desecrated lady left them nothing to wish for, though it was as personal indeed as what elicited it. "But you, Mr. Tinker, if one is to judge by some remarks you have made, you are not in the least a widower."

"Me!" he shouted, without the remotest consciousness of having received a reproof. "A widower? I guess you wouldn't think so, if you'd heard a few things I heard this morning after I came on deck! The trouble with steamships is, no matter how big they make 'em they'll never be able to make 'em big enough for a man to get down town before his wife wakes up the morning after he's been out a little late with a few congenial friends. Widower!" He laughed in rueful jocularity, and passed to another aspect of