shone in her wide, blue eyes. Upon her head was a small, lop-sided
bonnet, from which depended a rusty crêpe veil of which she seemed
inordinately conscious, and at the throat of her black gown was a large,
pink bow.

"Make you acquainted with Mis' Thomas, Miss Gallito," said Mrs.
Nitschkan heartily. "Marthy's one of my oldest friends an' one of my
newest converts. She's all right if she could let the boys alone, an'
not be always tangled up in some flirtation that her friends has got to
sit up nights scheming to get her out of. That pink bow an' that crêpe
veil shows she ain't got the right idea of her responsibilities as a
widow. So I brought her up to my little cabin, just a quarter of a mile
through the trees there, hopin' I'd get her mind turned on more sensible
things than men. Gosh a'mighty! She's got a chance to shoot bear here."

"I don't think you got any call to introduce me to the Black Pearl
that-a-way, Sadie." Mrs. Thomas's eyes filled with ready tears. "It
ain't manners. I wouldn't have come with her, Miss Gallito, but I got to
see pretty plain that the gentleman," here she blushed and bridled,
"that was courting me was awful anxious to get hold of the money and the
cabin that my last husband, in his grave 'most six months now, left me."
She wiped the tears from her eyes on the back of her hand, a movement
hampered somewhat by the fact that her handkerchief had been fashioned
into a bag to hold some chocolate creams and was tied tightly to her
thumb.

"That's what you get for cavorting around with a spindle-shanked,
knock-kneed, mush-brained jack-rabbit of a man," muttered Mrs. Nitschkan
scornfully.