accustomed to being damned since he was a yearling, displayed
absolutely no interest. Indeed, he seemed inclined to doze there in
the sun.

Taking his hat--his best hat--from his head, he belabored Glory
viciously over the jaws with it; silently except for the soft thud and
slap of felt on flesh. And the mood of him was as near murder as Weary
could come. Glory had been belabored with worse things than hats
during his eventful career; he laid back his ears, shut his eyes tight
and took it meekly.

There came a gasping gurgle from the hammock, and Weary's hand stopped
in mid-air. The girl's head was burrowed in a pillow and her slippers
tapped the floor while she laughed and laughed.

Weary delivered a parting whack, put on his hat and looked at her
uncertainly; grinned sheepishly when the humor of the thing came to him
slowly, and finally sat down upon the porch steps and laughed with her.

"Oh, gee! It was too funny," gasped the girl, sitting up and wiping
her eyes.

Weary gasped also, though it was a small matter--a common little word
of three letters. In all the messages sent him by the schoolma'am, it
was the precise, school-grammar wording of them which had irritated him
most and impressed him insensibly with the belief that she was too prim
to be quite human. The Happy Family had felt all along that they were
artists in that line, and they knew that the precise sentences ever
carried conviction of their truth. Weary mopped his perspiring face
upon a white silk handkerchief and meditated wonderingly.