“It’s just new to you, that’s all. You know perfectly well that when most people try to laugh what they really do is to cackle, or giggle, or shriek, or make horrible noises until they nearly choke. Women try not to cry, because it makes them look ugly. But just think how some people look when they laugh. All they need is a few lessons at the right time. Then they know how to laugh naturally and freely. You have to think how you are doing it at first. Afterward you laugh the right way without thinking at all.” “‘Ladies and gentlemen, I take pleasure in introducing Mlle. Bonnie May, laughing expert,’” said Baron derisively. “A very fine argument,” responded Bonnie May, nodding graciously. “And about the ‘occasion’ to laugh,” she persisted seriously. “There’s a whole lot to be said about that. You frame up a speech with a lot of care--to get out of a scrape, or to make people do something they don’t want to do--or for something like that. You ought to laugh on the same principle. Yet when most people tell you about laughing at anything they put it this way: ‘I couldn’t help laughing!’ You know you smile sometimes when you don’t mean it, just to help things along; or you say you pity people, or you say something to encourage them, for the same reason. In the same way, you ought to laugh sometimes when you’re not really amused. If you are downhearted or afraid you can hide it by laughing. And you can make people take a sensible view of things sometimes, just by laughing at them. But of course, you have to know how to do it right. If you bray at them, or giggle, they’ll be insulted, naturally.” Baron shook his head. “Where did you pick it all up?” he asked. “I didn’t ‘pick it up,’ exactly. Miss Barry took particular pains to teach it to me. On account of my work mostly. And I thought a lot of it out for myself.” Before Baron had time to make any response to her she sprang to her feet and picked up the neglected manuscript. All her interests were immediately centred in it. She turned a dozen pages rapidly. Then she paused in indecision and turned back a page or two. She was anxiously searching. “Here it is!” she cried. She was much relieved. “Please read that to me.” She indicated a sentence. Baron perceived that it was a longish passage--a grandiloquent flight which he read shamefacedly. She stopped him on the word “harbinger.” “That’s the word,” she said. “Say that again.” He complied. “What does it mean?” she wanted to know. He had scarcely started to explain when she exclaimed, “Oh, I see! Go on.” A voice interrupted them: Mrs. Shepard, announcing that dinner was ready. On the way down-stairs Bonnie May amazed Baron by repeating in its entirety the passage he had read to her--“harbinger,” and all. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” said she. In the lower hall Flora joined them. Baron glanced at her mischievously. “I’ve been learning a little something about the dark deeds that are going on around me,” he said.