I was hastening from bad to worse. I could have bitten my tongue out or kicked myself. With a tremendous effort, I pulled myself together and assumed as much dignity as was possible in my badly ruffled internal and external condition. "Are there any men about the place?" she asked, changing the subject with disconcerting suddenness. I flushed slightly at the taunt. "N-no! miss," I replied, in my best shop-keeper tone, "sorry,--but we are completely out of them." She must have detected the flavour of sarcasm, for her lips relaxed for the briefest moment, and a smile was born which showed two rows of even white teeth. I ventured a smile in return, but it proved a sorry and an unfortunate one, for it killed hers ruthlessly and right at the second of its birth, too. I almost waited for her to tell me I was "too fresh," but she did not do so. She had a more telling way. She simply wilted me with a silent reserve that there was no combating. Only on one or two occasions had I encountered that particular shade of reserve that adjusts everything around to its proper sphere and level without hurting, and it was always in elderly, aristocratic, British Duchesses; never in a young lady with golden hair and eyes,--well! at that time, I could not tell the colour of her eyes, but there was something in them that completed a combination that I seemed to have been hunting for all my life and had never been able to find. "Mr. Store-keeper," she commenced again. I felt like tearing my hair and crying aloud. "Mr. Store-keeper," forsooth. "You appear anxious to misconstrue me. Let me explain,--please." I bowed contritely. What else could I do? "This afternoon, I have a piano,--boxed,--coming by the steamer _Siwash_. I would like if you could find me some assistance to get it ashore and placed in my house." She said it so easily and it sounded so simple. But what a poser it was! Bring a full-fledged piano from a steamer three hundred yards out in the Bay, land it and place it in a house on the top of a rock. Heaven help the piano! I thought, as I gaped at her in bewilderment. "Oh!--of course," she put in hurriedly, toying with the chain of her silver purse,--"if you are afraid to tackle it, why!--I'll--we shall do it ourselves." She turned on her heel. She looked so determined that I had not the least doubt but that she would have a go at it anyway. "Not at all,--not at all. It will be a pleasure,--I am sure," I said quickly, as if I had been reared all my life on piano-moving. She turned and smiled; a real, full-grown, able-bodied, entrancing, mischievous smile, and all of it full on the dirty, grimy individual,--me. "It does not happen to be the kind of piano one can take to pieces, Miss Grant, is it?" I asked. "It is," she answered, "but that one might not be able to put it together again." It was another bull's eye for the lady. She went on. "I have never received a piano,--knocked down."