"Sleeping!" corrected Diane with a critical sniff.
Mr. Poynter fancied they were synonyms.
"Do you know," he added pointedly, "I imagine I'd find ever so much more romance and adventure about it if I only had some interesting ailment and a music-mill. I did think I had a bully cough, but it was only a wisp of hay in my throat."
Philip's powers of intuition were most fearful. Diane colored.
"Just what do you mean?" she inquired cautiously.
"Nothing at all," replied Philip with a charming smile. "I never do. Why mean anything when words come so easy without? It has occurred to me," he added innocently, "that it takes an uncommonly thick-skinned and unromantic dub to tour about covered with hay. Fancy sleeping through this wild and beautiful country when I might be grinding up lost chords to annoy the populace."
Diane had heard something of this sort before from quite another source. Acutely uncomfortable, she changed the subject. There was something uncanny in Philip's perfect comprehension of the minstrel's tactics.
A little later Mr. Poynter produced a green bug mounted eccentrically upon a bit of birch bark.
"I found a bug," he said guilelessly. "He was a very nice little bug. I thought you'd like him."
Diane frowned. For every flower the minstrel brought, Philip contrived a ridiculous parallel.