“Why, don't you make any effort to find out anything at ALL?” she asked pertly enough, but with such obvious good-nature that he could not but have pleasure in her speech. “Why, of course he did it! Who else did you suppose?” “Well,” said the young minister, despondently, “if he's as much against me as all that, I might as well hang up my fiddle and go home.” Sister Soulsby gave a little involuntary groan of impatience. She bent forward, and, lifting her eyes, rolled them at him in a curve of downward motion which suggested to his fancy the image of two eagles in a concerted pounce upon a lamb. “My friend,” she began, with a new note of impressiveness in her voice, “if you'll pardon my saying it, you haven't got the spunk of a mouse. If you're going to lay down, and let everybody trample over you just as they please, you're right! You MIGHT as well go home. But now here, this is what I wanted to say to you: Do you just keep your hands off these next few days, and leave this whole thing to me. I'll pull it into shipshape for you. No--wait a minute--don't interrupt now. I have taken a liking to you. You've got brains, and you've got human nature in you, and heart. What you lack is SABE--common-sense. You'll get that, too, in time, and meanwhile I'm not going to stand by and see you cut up and fed to the dogs for want of it. I'll get you through this scrape, and put you on your feet again, right-side-up-with care, because, as I said, I like you. I like your wife, too, mind. She's a good, honest little soul, and she worships the very ground you tread on. Of course, as long as people WILL marry in their teens, the wrong people will get yoked up together. But that's neither here nor there. She's a kind sweet little body, and she's devoted to you, and it isn't every intellectual man that gets even that much. But now it's a go, is it? You promise to keep quiet, do you, and leave the whole show absolutely to me? Shake hands on it.” Sister Soulsby had risen, and stood now holding out her hand in a frank, manly fashion. Theron looked at the hand, and made mental notes that there were a good many veins discernible on the small wrist, and that the forearm seemed to swell out more than would have been expected in a woman producing such a general effect of leanness. He caught the shine of a thin bracelet-band of gold under the sleeve. A delicate, significant odor just hinted its presence in the air about this outstretched arm--something which was not a perfume, yet deserved as gracious a name. He rose to his feet, and took the proffered hand with a deliberate gesture, as if he had been cautiously weighing all the possible arguments for and against this momentous compact. “I promise,” he said gravely, and the two palms squeezed themselves together in an earnest clasp.