He committed the unpardonable deed with a liberal hand. "Frightfully weird, you know," he mimicked with a chuckle, adding: "It takes the rude, untutored mind of a barbarian to be satisfied with sweetening a thing with sweetness instead of bitterness, doesn't it'?"
"But I prefer salt myself," said the girl; "it brings out the flavour."
She concluded her defence in some confusion due to Trego's practically synchronous utterance of her identical phrase: "it brings out the flavour." Then she realised that he had deliberately trapped her and was meanly laughing in the triumph of his low cunning. And she had to laugh, too, to save her face; but it was an empty laugh and accompanied by a flush that might have warned the man had he not too soon returned attention to his melon.
"Never fails," he remarked. "Though, of course, it isn't safe to work it on anybody in this outfit--not, at least, unless you're pretty sure there's a trace of human humour in the make-up of the specimen. I'm making a collection of those stereotypes; it helps a lot. O table-talk! where is thy sting--when a fellow knows all the answers?"
He rose, set aside the shell of the maltreated melon, and returned with his plunder from the hot-water dishes, to find Sally on the point of leaving.
"Not going?" he protested more soberly. "Don't tell me I offended you, catching you up like that!"
"How absurd!" the infuriated girl replied, smiling falsely. "But--"
"Then, if you've nothing pressing on, keep me company for a little. I want to ask your advice. I'm puzzled. Maybe you can suggest something."
She couldn't well go, then, without betraying umbrage, so she settled herself with a resigned temper, and for want of a better lead contented herself with a conversational stop-gap--"Puzzled?"--spoken in an encouraging tone.
"Yes. Something I noticed this morning. But it weaves into last night--maybe. Maybe not. I'm a slow thinker when it comes to puzzles."