"I am not laughing at Tasper Britt," he gasped, checking his hilarity.
"I would not laugh at any man who falls in love with you, Vona. I am
laughing at the idea of Tasper Britt writing poetry. Let me look out
of the window! Has Burkett Hill tipped over? Has the sun turned in the
heavens at high noon and started back to the east?"

"What does it mean?" she asked. Her expression excused the banality of
her query; her eyes told him that she knew, but her ears awaited his
indorsement of her woman's conviction.

He pointed to the big calendar on the wall. "It's a valentine," he said,
gravely. But the twinkle reappeared in his eyes when he added, "And
valentines have always been used for prefaces in the volume of Love."

She did not reflect any of his amusement. She clasped her hands and
gazed down on them, and her forehead was wrinkled with honest distress.

"Of course, you have sort of been guessing," he ventured. "All the
renovating process--the way he has been tiptoeing around and squinting
at you!"

She looked up suddenly and caught his gaze; his tone had been hard, but
his eyes were tender.

Then it happened!

They had been hiding their deeper feelings under the thin coating
of comradeship for a long time. As in the instance of other pent-up
explosives, only the right kind of a jar was needed to "trip" the mass.