eated herself sideways on the root, with her furled
white parasol in her lap, her skirts fastidiously tucked about her feet,
and glancing at the fatuous Abner from under her stack of fluffy hair
and light eyelashes, simply shook her head and said that "she reckoned
she wasn't hankering much for anything" that morning.

"I've been calkilatin' to myself, Miss Budd," said Abner resignedly,
"that when two folks--like ez you and me--meet together to kinder
discuss things that might go so far ez to keep them together, if they
hez had anything of that sort in their lives afore, they ought to speak
of it confidentially like together."

"Ef any one o' them sneakin', soulless critters in the kitchen hez bin
slingin' lies to ye about me--or carryin' tales," broke in Mary Ellen
Budd, setting every one of her thirty-two strong, white teeth together
with a snap, "well--ye might hev told me so to oncet without spilin' my
Sunday! But ez fer yer keepin' me a minit longer, ye've only got to pay
me my salary to-day and"--but here she stopped, for the astonishment in
Abner's face was too plain to be misunderstood.

"Nobody's been slinging any lies about ye, Miss Budd," he said slowly,
recovering himself resignedly from this last back-handed stroke of fate;
"I warn't talkin' o' you, but myself. I was only allowin' to say that I
was a di-vorced man."

As a sudden flush came over Mary Ellen's brownish-white face while
she stared at him, Abner hastened to delicately explain. "It wasn't
no onfaithfulness, Miss Budd--no philanderin' o' mine, but only
'incompatibility o' temper.'"

"Temper--your temper!" gasped Mary Ellen.

"Yes," said Abner.

And here a sudden change came over Mary Ellen's face, and she burst into
a shriek of laughter. She laughed with her hands slapping the sides of
her skirt, she laughed with her hands clasping her narrow, hollow waist,
laughed with her head down on her knees and her fluffy hair tumbling
over it. Abner was relieved, and yet it seemed strange to him that this
revelation of his temper should provoke such manifest incredulity in
both Byers and Mary Ellen. But perhaps these things would be made plain
to him hereafter; at present they must be accepted "in the day's work"
and tolerated.

"Your temper," gurgled Mary Ellen. "Saints alive! What kind o' temper?"

"Well, I reckon," returned Abner submissively, and selecting a word
to give his meaning more comprehension,--"I reckon it was
kinder--aggeravokin'."