Sherwood's eye suddenly became cold and dangerous. "If they didn't treat you right--" She smiled, genuinely this time, at his sudden truculence. "They didn't mob me," she rejoined equably, "and, anyway, I suppose it is to be expected." "It's that cat of Morrell's," he surmised. "Oh, she--and others. I ought not to have spoken of it, Jack. It's really beneath the contempt of sensible people." "I'll get after Morrell, if he doesn't make that woman behave," said Sherwood, without attention to her last speech. She smiled at him again, entirely calm and reasonable. "And what good would it do to get after Morrell?" she asked. "Mrs. Morrell only stands for what most of them feel. I don't care, anyway. I get along splendidly without them." She sauntered over to the window, where she began idly to poke one finger at the canary. "For the life of me, Patsy," confessed Sherwood, "I can't see that they're an inspiring lot, anyway. From what little I've seen of them, they haven't more than an idea apiece. They'd bore me to death in a week." "I know that. They'd bore me, too. Don't talk about them. When do they expect the _Panama_--do you know?" But with masculine persistence he refused to abandon the topic. "I must confess I don't see the point," he insisted. "You've got more brains than the whole lot of them together, you've got more sense, you're a lot better looking"--he surveyed her, standing in the full light by the canary's cage, her little glossy head thrown back, her pink lips pouted teasingly at the charmed and agitated bird, her fine clear features profiled in the gold of the sunshine--"and you're a thoroughbred, egad, which most of them are not." "Oh, thank you, kind sir." She threw him a humourous glance. "But of course that is not the point." "Oh, isn't it? Well, perhaps you'll tell me the point." She left the canary and came to face him. "I'm not respectable," she said. At the word he exploded. "Respectable? What are you talking about? You talk as though--as though we weren't married, egad!" "Well, Jack," she replied, a faint mocking smile curving the corners of her mouth, "when it comes to that, we _did_ elope, you'll have to acknowledge. And we weren't married for quite a long time afterward." "We got married as soon as we could, didn't we?" he cried indignantly. "Was it our fault that we didn't get married sooner? And what difference did it make, anyway?" "Now don't get all worked up," she chided. "I'm just telling you why, in the eyes of some of these people, I'm not 'respectable.' You asked me, you know." "Go on," he conceded to this last. "Well, we ran away and weren't married. That's item one. Then perhaps you've forgotten that I sat on lookout for some of your games in the early days in the mining camps?" "Forgotten?" said Sherwood, the light of reminiscence springing to his eyes. The same light had come into hers.