"A match? What on earth do you want with a match?" demanded Miss Mink. Then a look of apprehension swept over her face. Was this young man actually proposing to profane the virgin air of her domicile with the fumes of tobacco? "Perhaps you do not like that I should smoke?" Bowinski said instantly. "I beg you excuse, I--" "Oh! that's all right," said Miss Mink in a tone that she did not recognize as her own, "the matches are in that little bisque figure on the parlor mantel. I'll get you to leave the front door open, if you don't mind. It's kinder hot in here." Five o'clock that afternoon found Miss Mink and Alexis Bowinski still sitting facing each other in the front parlor. They were mutually exhausted, and conversation after having suffered innumerable relapses, seemed about to succumb. "If there's any place else you want to go, you mustn't feel that you've got to stay here," Miss Mink had urged some time after dinner. But Alexis had answered: "I know only two place. The Camp and the railway depot. I go on last Sunday to the railway depot. The Chaplain at the Camp advise me I go to church this morning. Perhaps I make a friend." "But what do the other soldiers do on Sunday?" Miss Mink asked desperately. "They promenade. Always promenade. Except they go to photo-plays, and dance hall. It is the hard part of war, the waiting part." Miss Mink agreed with him perfectly as she helped him wait. She had never spent such a long day in her life. At a quarter past five he rose to go. A skillful word on her part would have expedited matters, but Miss Mink was not versed in the social trick of speeding a departing guest. Fifteen minutes dragged their weary length even after he was on his feet. Then Miss Mink received a shock from which it took her an even longer time to recover. Alexis Bowinski, having at last arrived at the moment of departure, took her hand in his and, bowing awkwardly, raised it to his lips and kissed it! Then he backed out of the cottage, stalked into the twilight and was soon lost to sight beyond the hedge. Miss Mink sank limply on the sofa by the window, and regarded her small wrinkled hand with stern surprise. It was a hand that had never been kissed before and it was tingling in the strangest and most unaccountable manner. The following week was lived in the afterglow of that eventful Sunday. She described the soldier's visit in detail to the few customers who came in. She went early to prayer-meeting in order to tell about it. And in the telling she subordinated everything to the dramatic climax: "I never was so took back in my life!" she said. "After setting there for four mortal hours with nothing to say, just boring each other to death, for him to get up like that and make a regular play-actor bow, and kiss my hand! Well, I never _was_ so took back!"