id not understand. He had never been up
against conditions of that sort. He had not had time to fix his face and
his mood, as he did daily before the mirror in his bedroom. He did what
nobody had ever seen him do--what neither he nor the girl would have
predicted one minute before as among human probabilities--he broke down
and blubbered like a whipped urchin.

And after he had recovered some of his composure and was gazing up at
her again, sniffling and scrubbing his reddened eyes with the bulge
at the base of his thumb, knowing that he must say something by way
of legitimate excuse, dreading the ridicule that a girl's gossip might
bring upon him, a notion that was characteristic of Mr. Britt came
to him: he grimly weighed the idea of telling her that Files's boiled
dinner was the cause of his breakdown. However, in his weakness, his
love flamed more hotly than ever before.

"Vona, I'm so lonesome!" he gulped.

Miss Harnden had entered behind her shield, nerved like a battling
Amazon. She promptly lowered that shield and became all woman, with a
woman's instinctive sympathetic understanding, but womanlike, she took
the opportunity to introduce for her own defense a bit of guile with her
sympathy. "I quite understand how you feel about the loss of Mrs. Britt,
sir. And I'm glad because you remain so loyal to her memory."

Mr. Britt, like a man who had received a dipperful of cold water in the
face, backed away from anything like a proposal at that unpropitious
moment. But in all his arid nature he felt the need of some sort of
consolation from a feminine source. "Vona, I've just had a terrible
setback," he mourned. "There's only one other disappointment that could
be any worse--and I don't dare to think of that right now."

Miss Harnden apprehensively proceeded to keep him away from the
prospective disappointment, dwelling on the present, asking him
solicitously what had happened.

He told her of his ambition and of what Ossian Orne had reported.

"But why should that be so very important for a man like you--to go to
the legislature--Mr. Britt?"

He opened his mouth, hankering to blurt out what he had been treasuring
as dreams whose realization would serve as an inducement to her. He had
been picturing to himself their honeymoon at the state capital, away
from the captious tongues of Egypt--how he would stalk with his handsome
bride into the dining room of the capital's biggest hotel; how she would
attract the e