"Or to astonish you or amuse you or——"
"Work on your sensibilities, or get on your nerves, or play on your sympathies. But," he went on growing wroth at the recollection, "the idea of a little chit like that—and that isn't the worst. This morning she dragged me out of bed at half-past five to go fishing. Fishing! At this season! I never saw a girl so crazy for fish in my life; and when we had walked four miles to find the right spot and she had been silent long enough for me to feel a nibble at the bait and had helped me with all her might and main to haul in that blessed little fish, do you know what she did?"
The widow looked up questioningly.
"She cried because I wanted to bring it home and made me throw it back into the water. That's what she did!"
The widow sat up straight, with horrified eyes.
"Well, of course she did!" she exclaimed heatedly. "She only asked you to catch the fish didn't she—not to kill it?"
The bachelor stared at her for a moment without speaking. Then he got up silently and walked over to the window.
"I suppose," he remarked after a long pause, apparently addressing the front lawn or the blue heavens, "that it's that same sort of logic that incites a woman to play for a man until she catches him—and then throw him overboard. O Lord," he continued, glancing at the sky devoutly, "why couldn't you have made them nice and sensible?"
The widow took up her book with disdain.
"'Nice and sensible'" she repeated witheringly. "Just think how it would feel to be called 'nice and sensible!' I wish," she added, turning to her novel with an air of boredom, "that you would go and—talk to Ethel Manners."