“I'm so glad you came. But you gave me SUCH a fright an hour ago.”
Mr. Gashwiler was both pleased and astounded. “What have I done, my dear Mrs. Hopkinson?” he began.
“Oh, don't talk,” she said sadly. “What have you done, indeed! Why, you sent me that beautiful bouquet. I could not mistake your taste in the arrangement of the flowers;—but my husband was here. You know his jealousy. I was obliged to conceal it from him. Never—promise me now—NEVER do it again.”
Mr. Gashwiler gallantly protested.
“No! I am serious! I was so agitated: he must have seen me blush.”
Nothing but the gross flattery to this speech could have clouded its manifest absurdity to the Gashwiler consciousness. But Mr. Gashwiler had already succumbed to the girlish half-timidity with which it was uttered. Nevertheless, he could not help saying:
“But why should he be so jealous now? Only day before yesterday I saw Simpson of Duluth hand you a nosegay right before him!”
“Ah,” returned the lady, “he was outwardly calm THEN, but you know nothing of the scene that occurred between us after you left.”
“But,” gasped the practical Gashwiler, “Simpson had given your husband that contract,—a cool fifty thousand in his pocket!”
Mrs. Hopkinson looked as dignifiedly at Gashwiler as was consistent with five feet three (the extra three inches being a pyramidal structure of straw-colored hair), a frond of faint curls, a pair of laughing blue eyes, and a small belted waist. Then she said, with a casting down of her lids: