Hughie bowed his head. Joan gave a low gurgling laugh.
"There's no getting over it, Hughie!" she said. "He scored. A nasty slap for little me! But I deserved it, for trying to trifle with his young affections. Well, you have given me one reason for his departure. What was the other?"
Hughie eyed her in some embarrassment. Then he said,—
"He began to talk about you, Joey, in a way I didn't like, so I—"
His eye slid round towards the window, and then downward in the direction of his right foot. A smile crept over his troubled face, and he glanced at Joan.
"Oh, Hughie, did you?" she exclaimed rapturously.
"Yes. He landed in that rose-bed. Look!"
Joey shuffled off the table and joined him by the window. A few feet below them, on the rose-bed, lay the unmistakable traces of the impact of a body falling from rest with an acceleration due to something more than the force of gravity.
Joan cooed softly, evidently well pleased. Hughie turned and regarded her with a puzzled expression. No man ever yet fathomed the workings of the feminine mind, but he never quite gives up trying to do so.
"Are you glad that he got thrown out?" he asked.