nearly at right angles to his head.

After all, the ludicrous is but the unexpected. Many laugh who see an
old woman fall upon the slippery pavement. This new spectacle was the
absolutely undreamed-of to Nora, who was no scientist. Her laughter
was irrepressible. In a trice the precedents of years were gone. Nora
felt the empire of her dignity slipping away, but none the less could
not repress her mirth. And more than this; as she gazed into the
honest, blue-eyed face before her she felt a lessening of her desire to
retain her icy pedestal, and she struggled the less against her
laughter. Indeed, with a sudden fright, she found her laughter growing
nervous. She, the head waitress, was perturbed, alarmed!

Sam followed up his advantage royally. "I can work 'em both to onct!"
he exclaimed triumphantly. And did so. "There! They was a boy in our
school onct that could work his airs one at a time, but I never did see
no one else but me that could work 'em both to onct. Look a-here!" He
waggled his ears ecstatically. The reserve of Nora oozed, waned,
vanished.

Even, the sternest fibre must at length succumb under prolonged
Herculean endeavour. No man may long continuously wag his ears, even
alternately; therefore Sam perforce paused in time. Yet by that
time--in what manner it occurred no one may know--Nora was seated on
the chair next to him at the table. They were alone. Silence fell.
Nora's hand moved nervously among the spoons. Upon it dropped the
mutilated one of Sam.

"Nory," said he, "I'd--I'd work 'em all my life--fer you!" And to
Nora, who turned away her head now, not for the purpose of hiding a
smile, this seemed always a perfectly fit and proper declaration of
this man's regard.

"I know I'm no good," murmured Sam. "I'm a awful coward. I-I-I've
l-l-loved you ever sence the fust time that I seen you, but I was such
a coward, I--I couldn't--couldn't--"

"You're not!" cried Nora imperiously.

"Oh, yes, I am," said Sam.

"Look at them," said Nora, almost touching his crippled fingers.
"Don't I know?"

"Oh, that," said Sam, hiding the hand under the droop of the
tablecloth. "Why, that? I got froze some, a-drivin'."

"Yes, and," said Nora accusingly, "how did you get froze? A-drivin'
'way down there, in the storm, after folks. No one else'd go."

"Why, yes. Cap Franklin, he went," said Sam. "That wasn't nothin'.
Why, o' _course_ we'd go."

"No one else wouldn't, though."