new sort of mud-pie."

"You don't understand these things, attractive," Margaret gently
pointed out. "You aren't in harmony with the trend of modern thought."

"No, thank God!" said the Colonel, heartily.

Ensued a silence during which he chipped at his egg-shell in an
absent-minded fashion.

"That fellow Kennaston said anything to you yet?" he presently
queried.

"I--I don't understand," she protested--oh, perfectly unconvincingly.
The tea-making, too, engrossed her at this point to an utterly
improbable extent.

Thus it shortly befell that the Colonel, still regarding her under
intent brows, cleared his throat and made bold to question her
generosity in the matter of sugar; five lumps being, as he suggested,
a rather unusual allowance for one cup.

Then, "Mr. Kennaston and I are very good friends," said she, with
dignity. And having spoiled the first cup in the making, she began on
another.

"Glad to hear it," growled the old gentleman. "I hope you value his
friendship sufficiently not to marry him. The man's a fraud--a flimsy,
sickening fraud, like his poetry, begad, and that's made up of botany
and wide margins and indecency in about equal proportions. It ain't