She concluded her defence in some confusion due to Trego's practically synchronous utterance of her identical phrase: "it brings out the flavour." Then she realised that he had deliberately trapped her and was meanly laughing in the triumph of his low cunning. And she had to laugh, too, to save her face; but it was an empty laugh and accompanied by a flush that might have warned the man had he not too soon returned attention to his melon. "Never fails," he remarked. "Though, of course, it isn't safe to work it on anybody in this outfit--not, at least, unless you're pretty sure there's a trace of human humour in the make-up of the specimen. I'm making a collection of those stereotypes; it helps a lot. O table-talk! where is thy sting--when a fellow knows all the answers?" He rose, set aside the shell of the maltreated melon, and returned with his plunder from the hot-water dishes, to find Sally on the point of leaving. "Not going?" he protested more soberly. "Don't tell me I offended you, catching you up like that!" "How absurd!" the infuriated girl replied, smiling falsely. "But--" "Then, if you've nothing pressing on, keep me company for a little. I want to ask your advice. I'm puzzled. Maybe you can suggest something." She couldn't well go, then, without betraying umbrage, so she settled herself with a resigned temper, and for want of a better lead contented herself with a conversational stop-gap--"Puzzled?"--spoken in an encouraging tone. "Yes. Something I noticed this morning. But it weaves into last night--maybe. Maybe not. I'm a slow thinker when it comes to puzzles." He filled a cup with coffee from the shining urn and resumed his chair. "You see . . ." Some intimation of his gaucherie made him stumble. "Of course," he went on, semi-apologetic, "you understand that I'm going on the assumption that you're as human as I am." "Thank you," said Sally sweetly. "Human enough," he explained, "not to think I'm a savage because I've reminded you of last night." "I see no reason--" she began with dignity. "And there isn't any," he argued heartily. "We're both old enough to behave like grown-ups. Only, a fellow never can tell where he stands with most of these festive dames. I've been lorgnetted until I'm scared to open my mouth. But with you--well, it's like meeting somebody from home to talk to you." "But the puzzle?" she reminded him with more patience than he knew.