Mrs. Winslow said this with as much sincerity and coolness as if giving an estimate on any ordinary business transaction, and evidently meant it.
"Oh, you wouldn't kill anybody, Winslow," replied Fox airily.
"Wouldn't I, though, Mr. Fox?" she rejoined with the old glitter in her eyes and paleness upon her upper lip that had at an earlier period worried the Rev. Mr. Bland; "wouldn't I? If you had fifty thousand dollars in your trunk, I would kill you, appropriate the money, cut you up and pack you in the trunk and ship you to the South—or some other hot climate by the next express!"
She was just as earnest about the remark as she would have been in carrying out the act; and after Fox had congratulated himself, both aloud cheerfully and in his own mind very thankfully, that neither his trunk, or for that matter his imagination, contained any such gorgeous sum, he went to his own room for the night, leaving the very excited Mrs. Winslow and the very calm Mr. Bristol to contemplate the groceries and each other.
After a few minutes' brown study she suddenly turned to her companion with: "Bristol, you and I are pretty good friends, aren't we?"
"Certainly," he replied.
"And haven't I always treated you pretty well?"
"Yes; with one exception."
"What is that?"
"The sleep-walking you did in my room."