they were stepping up on to the piazza, and he had a table napkin in
his hand and the dynamite sparks were flying from his spectacles as
he called out:

"Great heaven! Zena, why in everlasting blazes can't you get in to
tea at a Christian hour?"

Zena gave one look of appeal to Pupkin, and Pupkin looked one glance
of comprehension, and turned and fled down Oneida Street. And if the
scene wasn't quite as dramatic as the renunciation of Tancred the
Troubadour, it at least had something of the same elements in it.

Pupkin walked home to his supper at the Mariposa House on air, and
that evening there was a gentle distance in his manner towards Sadie,
the dining-room girl, that I suppose no bank clerk in Mariposa ever
showed before. It was like Sir Galahad talking with the tire-women of
Queen Guinevere and receiving huckleberry pie at their hands.

After that Mr. Pupkin and Zena Pepperleigh constantly met together.
They played tennis as partners on the grass court behind Dr.
Gallagher's house,--the Mariposa Tennis Club rent it, you remember,
for fifty cents a month,--and Pupkin used to perform perfect
prodigies of valour, leaping in the air to serve with his little body
hooked like a letter S. Sometimes, too, they went out on Lake
Wissanotti in the evening in Pupkin's canoe, with Zena sitting in the
bow and Pupkin paddling in the stern and they went out ever so far
and it was after dark and the stars were shining before they came
home. Zena would look at the stars and say how infinitely far away
they seemed, and Pupkin would realize that a girl with a mind like
that couldn't have any use for a fool such as him. Zena used to ask