"Well," said I, "go on. What about the widow?"
"The widow—oh—when I got there I found another row."
"Another?"
"Yes, another—the worst of all. But by this time I had grown used to it, and I was as serene as a mountain-lake."
"But—the row—what was it about?"
"Oh, she had heard about my engagement to Miss Phillips, and her arrival; so she at once began to talk to me like a father. The way she questioned me—why the Grand Inquisitor is nothing to it. But she didn't make any thing by it. You see I took up the Fabian tactics and avoided a direct engagement."
"How's that?"
"Why, I wouldn't answer her."
"How could you avoid it?"
"Pooh I—easy enough—I sat and chaffed her, and laughed at her, and called her jealous, and twitted her, no end. Well, you know, at last she got laughing herself, and we made it all up, and all that sort of thing, you know; still, she's very pertinacious, and even after we made up she teased and teased, till she got an explanation out of me."