"Oh, well, Mr. Shockley, to be serious, I don't care. Do you suppose a wolf will be found? I am so bored." Which remark caused the eminent Lieutenant to open his mouth very wide in imitation of a laugh, divested of all mirth.
"Miss Katherine Searles," he said, in mock majesty, "I shall do myself the honor to crawl into the first badger-hole we come to and stay there until you dig me out."
"Don't be absurd; you know I always bury my dead. Mr. Butler, do you expect we shall find a wolf? Ah, there is that King Charles cavalier, Mr. Ermine—for all the world as though he had stepped from an old frame. I do think he is lovely."
"Oh, bother that yellow Indian; he is such a nuisance," jerked Butler.
"Why do you say that? I find him perfectly new; he never bores me, and he stood between me and that enraged savage."
"A regular play. I do not doubt he arranged it beforehand. However, it was well thought out—downright dramatic, except that the Indian ought to have killed him."
"Oh, would you have arranged it that way if you had been playwright?"
"Yes," replied the bilious lover.
Shaking her bridle rein, she cried, "Come, Mr. Shockley, let us ride to Ermine; at least you will admire him." Shockley enjoyed the death stroke which she had administered to Butler, but saying to himself as he thought of Ermine, "D—— the curly boy," and followed his charming and difficult quarry. He alone had ridden true.