our handy
bathtub; then, I grant you, the climb up the cliff weighs heavily in
the scale of disadvantages."

He drew out the chair adjoining Sally's and attacked the half of an
iced canteloup, but after the first mouthful put down his spoon.

"Sugar, please," he said with a deprecatory grimace, indicating the
bowl just beyond the girl's place. "I know I ought to go in for salt
if I want to come through as a regular guy; but if you won't tell on
me, I'm going to enjoy this melon in my own primitive Western way.
Thanks."

He committed the unpardonable deed with a liberal hand. "Frightfully
weird, you know," he mimicked with a chuckle, adding: "It takes the
rude, untutored mind of a barbarian to be satisfied with sweetening a
thing with sweetness instead of bitterness, doesn't it'?"

"But I prefer salt myself," said the girl; "it brings out the
flavour."

She concluded her defence in some confusion due to Trego's practically
synchronous utterance of her identical phrase: "it brings out the
flavour." Then she realised that he had deliberately trapped her
and was meanly laughing in the triumph of his low cunning. And she had
to laugh, too, to save her face; but it was an empty laugh and
accompanied by a flush that might have warned the man had he not too
soon returned attention to his melon.

"Never fails," he remarked. "Though, of course, it isn't safe to work
it on anybody in this outfit--not, at least, unless you're pretty
sure there's a trace of human humour in the make-up of the specimen.
I'm making a collection of those stereotypes; it helps a lot. O
table-talk! where is thy sting--when a fellow knows all the answers?"

He rose, set aside the shell of the maltreated melon, and returned
with his plunder from the hot-water dishes, to find Sally on the point
of leaving.

"Not going?" he protested more soberly. "Don't tell me I offended you,
catching you up like that!"

"How absurd!" the infuriated girl replied, smiling falsely. "But--"

"Then, if you've nothing pressing on, keep me company for a little. I
want to ask your advice. I'm puzzled. Maybe you can suggest
something."

She couldn't well go, then, without betraying umbrage, so she settled
herself with a resigned temper, and for want of a better lead
contented herself with a conversational stop-gap--"Puzzled?"--spoken
in an encouraging tone.

"Yes. Something I noticed this morning. But it weaves into last
night--maybe. Maybe not. I'm a slow thinker