ohn asked for something to eat. When
Belle wanted to be rid of him he refused "no" for an answer:

"You wouldn't send me away without a cup of coffee, would you? No
potatoes? Well, I never eat potatoes"--John coughed. "They are
fattening." Then he looked up cheerfully as if a new idea had struck
him: "What's the matter with a little soft-boiled ice cream?"

The upshot was that he had to be asked to share the lunch which he did
with relish, paying his way with his usual foolery. When the plates
were emptied and John had officiously asked leave to light a cigarette,
he glanced toward the folding bed and asked Belle to play something.

"That's no piano," exclaimed Belle, with contempt. "That's a bed."

John seemed undisturbed: "Curious," he mused, "we used to have an
upright piano at home with that same kind of wood, same pattern
exactly; you could have that bed made over into a piano, Belle.
Straighten out the springs and you wouldn't have to buy hardly any wire
at all."

Belle stared at him: "Where would I sleep if I did?" she demanded.

John threw back his head, blew a delicate puff of smoke toward the
ceiling and looked across at his unsympathetic hostess. Then he
brought his fist down on the table; "Marry me, Belle, and sleep in a
regular bed! What?"

Belle was justly indignant. Kate's laughing made her more indignant.
For John had fairly bubbled his proposal through a laugh of his own.

"I used to sleep in a box like that myself," he went on. "But the year
it was so dry the grasshoppers got into it." John coughed again
unobtrusively. "I raffled that bed off," he continued, low and
reminiscently. "A conductor won it. But it didn't fool him. He knew
the bed as well as I did; he'd slept in it. So I bought it in again,
cheap, and traded it to an old Indian buck--a one-eyed man--for a pony.
Many a time I've laughed, thinking of that bed up on the Reservation.
Those bucks, you know, are desperate gamblers. I understand they've
been playing hearts with that blamed bed ever since and putting it on
the high man."

At this, John laughed harder than ever, Belle sputtering as she watched
him.

Then he turned his amiable face on Kate: "How are you all at the home?"

"Very well."

"What's the news up your way?"

"Not a thing since the Fourth of July."

"Father pretty well?"

"Quite."

"When did you see him last?"

It was an odd question: "Last night--why?" asked Kate in turn.

"He didn't