Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/246

 child steals its rosebud hand into yours, beguiling you with prattle; but afterwards—well, if I had the choice, I'd rather be chloroformed and struck sharply with an axe. I'd be my old self again sooner." Whereupon he would have written a guarded piece for the paper about this had I not dissuaded him. But I saw that I must at once have with Miss Caroline what in a later day came to be called "a heart-to-heart talk"; and I forthwith summoned what valor I could for the ordeal.

"I never dreamed—I never suspected—how should I?" she murmured pathetically, after my opening speech of a few simple but telling phrases. She listened in genuine horror while I gave the reasons why she might justly regard the call of our minister and her entertainment of the Club as nothing short of adventures—adventures which she had survived scathless not but by the favor of an indulgent Providence.

"So that is what those little white satin bows mean?" she asked, and I said that it most emphatically was.

"I suspected it might be some kind of mourning for babies—a local custom, you know, though it did seem queer. What can they think of me?"

"They don't know what to think now," I said, "and if you are wise, you will never let them know."

"The Colonel was proud of that punch," she mused.

"I dare say he had reasons," I answered grimly.