“Mr. Denby is a great disappointment to me, too,” Ethel Cartwright confessed. “Couldn’t you invent a new way to smuggle?”
“It wasn’t for lack of inventive powers,” he assured her, “it was just respect for the law.”
“I didn’t know we had any left in America,” Michael observed, and then added, “but then you’ve lived a lot abroad, Denby.”
“Mr. Denby must be rewarded with a cigarette,” Ethel declared, bringing the silver box from the mantel and offering him one. “A cigarette, Mr. Denby?”
“Thanks, no,” he answered, “I prefer to roll my own if you don’t mind.”
It seemed that the operation of rolling a cigarette was amazingly interesting to the girl. Her eager eyes fastened themselves intently on a worn pigskin pouch he carried.
“Can’t you do it with one hand?” she asked disappointedly; “just like cowboys do in plays?”
“It seems I’m doomed to disappoint you,” he smiled. “I find two hands barely sufficient.”
“Sometime you must roll me one,” she said. “Will you?”
“With pleasure,” he returned, lighting his own.