"But he gave you credit for being only temporarily deranged."

"Either he or I ought to be up for examination by a medical board,"
stated the girl poutingly. "One of us must be crazy. The night that I
stole his molasses pie--it was pretty awful pie, but I was starved--I
stumbled over something in the darkness and fell into it with an awful
clatter. What do you suppose it was?"

"I think I could guess," smiled the other.

"Not unless you knew. Personally I couldn't believe it. It felt like a
boat, and it rocked like a boat, and there were the seats and the oars.
I could feel them. A steel boat! Miss Van Arsdale, it isn't reasonable."

"Why isn't it reasonable?'

"I looked on the map in his room and there isn't so much as a mud-puddle
within miles and miles and miles. Is there?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then what does he want of a steel boat?"

"Ask him."

"It might stir him up. They get violent if you question their pet
lunacies, don't they?"

"It's quite simple. Ban is just an incurable romanticist. He loves the