that account. At the next he tormented
himself with the conviction that she thus merely avoided the issue.
Between these moods he alternated, without being able to abide in
either. He forgot all about Old Mizzou.

Promptly at noon the following day he turned up the little right-hand
trail for the first time.

The Lawton house he found, first of all, to be scrupulously neat. It
stood on a knoll, as do most gulch cabins, in order that occasional
freshets might pass below, and the knoll looked as though it had been
clipped with a pair of scissors. Not a crooked little juniper bush was
allowed to intrude its plebeian sprawl among the dignified pines and
the gracefully infrequent bushes. In front of the cabin itself was a
"rockery" of pink quartz, on which were piled elk antlers. The building
was L-shaped, of two low stories, had a veranda with a railing, and
possessed various ornamental wood edgings, all of which were painted.
The whole affair was mathematically squared and correspondingly neat.
Some boxes and pots of flowers adorned the window ledges.

Bennington's knock was answered by an elderly woman, who introduced
herself at once as Mrs. Lawton. She commenced a voluble and slightly
embarrassed explanation of how "she" would be down in a moment or so,
at the same time leading the way into the parlour. While this
explanation was going forward, Bennington had a good chance to examine
his hostess and her surroundings.

Mrs. Lawton was of the fat but energetic variety. She fairly shone with
cleanliness and with an insistent determination to keep busy. You could
see that all the time her tongue was uttering polite platitudes
concerning the weather, her mind was hovering like a dragon fly over
this or that flower of domestic economy. She was one of the women who
carry their housekeeping to a perfection uncomfortable both to herself
and everybody else, and then delude themselves into the martyrlike
belief that she is doing it all entirely for others. As a consequence,
she exhibited much of the time an aggrieved air that comported but
ludicrously with her tendency to bustle. And it must be confessed that
in other ways Mrs. Lawton was ludicrous. Her dumpy little form was
dressed in the loudest of prints, the figures of which turned her into
a huge flower bed of brilliant cabbage-like blooms. Over this chaos of
colours peered her round little face with its snapping eyes. She
discoursed in sentences which began coherently, b