“Exceedingly kind, courteous beyond measure—we are more than obliged to you,” cooed Miss Amelia, with a face like a sunset as she rolled the leather up with nervous fingers.
“Got children, ma'am,” asked the American, seriously, as the coach proceeded on its way.
Miss Amelia Duff made the best joke of her life without meaning it. “Twenty-seven,” said she, with an air of great gratitude, and the stranger smiled.
“School-ma'am. Now that's good, that is; it puts me in mind of home, for I appreciate school-ma'ams so heartily that about as soon as I got out of the school myself I married one. I've never done throwing bouquets at myself about it ever since, but I'm sorry for the mites she could have been giving a good time to as well as their education, if it hadn't been that she's so much mixed up with me. What made me ask about children was that—that mediaeval animator. I haven't seen one for years and years, not since old Deacon Springfield found me astray in his orchard one night and hiking for a short-cut home. I thought they'd been abolished by the treaty of Berlin.”
Miss Amelia thrust it hurriedly into the reticule. “We have never used one all our life,” she said, “but now we fear we have to, and, as you see, it's quite thin, it's quite a little one.”
“So it is,” said the stranger, solemnly. “It's thin, it's translucent, you might say; but I guess the kiddies are pretty little, too, and won't be able to make any allowance for the fact that you could have had a larger size if you wanted. It may be light on the fingers and mighty heavy on the feelings.”
“That's what you said,” whispered Miss Amelia to her sister.
“As moral suasion, belting don't cut ice,” went on the American. “It's generally only a safety-valve for a wrothy, grown-up person with a temper and a child that can't hit back.”
“That's what you said,” whispered Miss Jean to Miss Amelia, and never did two people look more miserably guilty.
“What beats me,” said the stranger, “is that you should have got along without it so far and think it necessary now.”