re there any men about the place?" she asked, changing the subject
with disconcerting suddenness.

I flushed slightly at the taunt.

"N-no! miss," I replied, in my best shop-keeper tone, "sorry,--but we
are completely out of them."

She must have detected the flavour of sarcasm, for her lips relaxed for
the briefest moment, and a smile was born which showed two rows of even
white teeth. I ventured a smile in return, but it proved a sorry and
an unfortunate one, for it killed hers ruthlessly and right at the
second of its birth, too.

I almost waited for her to tell me I was "too fresh," but she did not
do so. She had a more telling way. She simply wilted me with a silent
reserve that there was no combating.

Only on one or two occasions had I encountered that particular shade of
reserve that adjusts everything around to its proper sphere and level
without hurting, and it was always in elderly, aristocratic, British
Duchesses; never in a young lady with golden hair and eyes,--well! at
that time, I could not tell the colour of her eyes, but there was
something in them that completed a combination that I seemed to have
been hunting for all my life and had never been able to find.

"Mr. Store-keeper," she commenced again.

I felt like tearing my hair and crying aloud. "Mr. Store-keeper,"
forsooth.

"You appear anxious to misconstrue me. Let me explain,--please."

I bowed contritely. What else could I do?

"This afternoon, I have a piano,--boxed,--coming by the steamer
_Siwash_. I would like if you could find me some assistance to get it
ashore and placed in my house."

She said it so easily and it sounded so simple. But what a poser it
was! Bring a full-fledged piano from a steamer three hundred yards out
in the Bay, land it and place it in a house on the top of a rock.
Heaven help the piano! I thought, as I gaped at her in bewilderment.

"Oh!--of course," she put in hurriedly, toying with the chain of her
silver purse,--"if you are afraid to tackle it, why!--I'll--we shall do
it ourselves."

She turned on her heel.

She looked so determined that I had not the least doubt but that she
would have a go at it anyway.

"Not at all,--not at all. It will be a pleasure,--I am sure," I said
quickly, as if I had been reared all my life on piano-moving.

She turned and smiled; a real, full-grown, able-bodied, entrancing,
mischievous smile, and all of it full on the dirty, grimy
individual,--me.

"It