Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/330

 "May I see it?" I thought she felt a deeper interest than she cared to reveal.

"Unfortunately, no. If you only could see it, you would see that it is almost a perfect likeness—perhaps a bit more Little Miss than you could be now—but it's unmistakably true."

"I lost such a picture once," she said with a fall of her eyes. "Where is the one you have?"

"Sometimes it's behind my eyes and sometimes it is out before them."

"Nonsense!"

"To be sure! Only Jim and I, trained and hardened in the ways of belief, are equal to a feat of that sort."

"I see no merit in believing that."

"I don't know that there is, especially—not in believing this particular thing, but the power for belief in general which it implies—you see I am unprejudiced."

"Why should you want to believe it?"

I should have known, without catching the glint of her eyes under the hat brim, that a Peavey spoke there.

"If you could see the thing once, you'd understand," I said, an answer, of course, fit only for a Peavey.

"At all events, you'll not keep it long." The words were Peavey enough, but the voice was rather curiously Lansdale.

"I have made as little effort to keep it as I did to