position."

"Of course he would talk about it!" said the girl darkly.

"I am convinced," Tish went on, dexterously turning a pancake by a swift
movement of the pan, "that sensational movies are responsible for much
that is wrong with the country to-day. They set false standards.
Perfectly pure-minded people see them and are filled with thoughts of
crime."

Although she had ignored him steadily, the girl turned now to Mr.
Oliver.

"They don't believe anything I tell them. Why don't you explain?" she
demanded.

"Explain!" he said in a furious voice. "Explain to three lunatics?
What's the use?"

"You got me into this, you know."

"I did! I like that! What in the name of Heaven induced you to ride off
the way you did?"

Tish paused, with the frying-pan in the air. "Silence!" she commanded.
"You are both only reaping what you have sowed. As far as quarreling
goes, you can keep that until you are married, if you intend to be. I
don't know but I'd advise it. It's a pity to spoil two houses."

But the girl said that she wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on
earth, and he fell back to sulking again.

As Aggie observed later, he acted as if he had never cared for her,
while Mr. Bell, on the contrary, could not help his face changing when
he so much as mentioned her name.

We made some tea and ate a hearty breakfast, while the men watched us.
And as we ate, Tish held the moving-picture business up to contumely and
scorn.

"Lady," said one of the prostrate men, "aren't you going to give us
anything to eat?"

"People," Tish said, ignoring him, "who would ordinarily cringe at the
sight of a wounded beetle sit through bloody murders and go home with
the obsession of crime."

"I hope you won't take it amiss," said the man again, "if I say that,
seeing it's our flour and bacon, you either ought to feed us or take it
away and eat it where we can't see you."

"I take it," said Tish to the girl, pouring in more batter, "that you
yourself would never have thought of highway robbery had you not been
led to it by an overstimulated imagination."

"I wish," said the girl rudely, "that you wouldn't talk so much. I've
got a headache."

When we had finished Tish indicated the frying-pan and the batter.
"Perhaps," she said, "you would like to bake some cakes for these
friends of yours. We have a long trip ahead of us."

But the girl replied heartlessly that she hoped they would starve to
death, ignoring their pitifu