“Do you know what Bardek means by Saint Acetum?” she asked him suddenly. She had been studying his rather solemn-smiling face, delighting in its fine seriousness—made fine, she thought, by the light of a smile that hovered ever in the eyes and in and out the firm lips.
“What does Bardek mean by anything!” Allen chuckled contentedly, the solemnity quite fading from his face at the thought of the unfathomable Bardek. “Saint Acetum? I never heard of the person.”
“Oh!” Gorgas laughed in her impulsive way. “Saint Acetum is you!—The Vinegar Saint! Oh, Allen Blynn, that is too funny!...” Allen frowned at her inquiringly. “That’s just the way he would look, too—stern, and wise, and worried—”
“Worried?”
“For fear the roof would fall in, you know.”
“Roof?” he glanced apprehensively at the ceiling.
“Saint Acetum, you know—” she tried to explain. His serious face was delightfully comic; in a flash she saw how it would be immensely jolly, and assuring, to have him gazing at her forever as if she needed the firmest and sternest looking after.
“Saint Acetum?” he cogitated. “There ain’t no such animal.”
“Oh, yes,” she continued, “Bardek says—”
“Bardek invented him, then.”