"Sally," he said, "I've been traveling through life on a half-fare ticket. Now I'm going to have my little fling. And you brace up, too, and be the old mischievous Sally I used to know. Aren't you glad to be away from those sewing circles and gossip-bees, and——"
"Ugh! Don't ever mention them," she shuddered. Then she, too, felt a tinge of recurring springtide. "If you start to smoking, I think I'll take up flirting once more."
He pinched her cheek and laughed. "As the saying is, go as far as you desire and I'll leave the coast clear."
He kept his promise, too, for they were no sooner on the train and snugly bestowed in section five, than he was up and off.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To the smoking-room," he swaggered, brandishing a dangerous looking cigar.
"Oh, Walter," she snickered, "I feel like a young runaway."
"You look like one. Be careful not to let anybody know that you're a"—he lowered his voice—"an old preacher's wife."
"I'm as ashamed of it as you are," she whispered. Then he threw her a kiss and a wink. She threw him a kiss and winked, too. And he went along the aisle eyeing his cigar gloatingly. As he entered the smoking-room, lighted the weed and blew out a great puff with a sigh of rapture, who could have taken him, with his feet cocked up, and his red tie rakishly askew, for a minister?
And Sally herself was busy disguising herself, loosening up her hair coquettishly, smiling the primness out of the set corners of her mouth and even—let the truth be told at all costs—even passing a pink-powdered puff over her pale cheeks with guilty surreptition.