"Yes, indeed! And once when I was out walking ever so far from everybody I met one face to face. My first impulse was to run, but I thought if I did so it might attack me, so, trying not to show that I was frightened, I picked up a stick, and just then——"
Seeing that Mr. Cone's gaze wandered, Miss Gaskett paused to learn the cause of it. She flushed as she found that Mrs. Budlong, with a smile wreathing her face, was listening to the recital.
"I'll tell you the rest when you are not so busy," Miss Mattie said, taking her key from Mr. Cone hastily.
Mrs. Budlong declared that her pleasure equalled his own when Mr. Cone expressed his delight at seeing her, and there was no thought on the minds of either as to the hotel rules she had violated or the food she had carried away from the table in the front of her blouse and her reticule.
"You are looking in splendid health, Mrs. Budlong," he asserted, quite as if that lady ever had looked otherwise.
"Yes, the change benefited me greatly." A stranger might have gathered from the plaintive note in her voice that prior to her trip she had been an invalid.
"You, too, found the Western country interesting?"
"Oh, very! At heart, Mr. Cone, I am a Child of Nature, and the primitive always appeals to me strongly," Mrs. Budlong hesitated and seemed debating. Having made her decision she asked in an undertone:
"I can trust you?"
"Absolutely," replied Mr. Cone with emphasis, which intimated that the torture chamber could not wring from him any secret she chose to deposit.