“Um-m-m-m,” said Mahlon. “You will find, young lady, that you will be glad enough to be the girl of one of the boys of this town one of these days, when you have finished your education and the time comes to go to a home of your own. And I don’t know who there is that you know, or that you would be likely to know, that is so handsome or so admirably situated as Junior. Let me tell you, he did a mighty fine thing to-night, a manly thing, a praiseworthy thing.” “Tell me,” said Mahala, delighted to have averted her father’s attention from the bird and herself. And so, Mahlon told her how very praiseworthy had been Junior’s conduct in what she was constrained to admit had been a most embarrassing and difficult situation for her father. “All right,” said Mahala, “that was fine of him. I do like him slightly better than I did before you told me that.” “And now then, we will proceed,” said her father. “What answer did you make when Junior said that you were his girl?” “I told him I was not,” said Mahala promptly. “And then what did Junior do?” “He pulled me across the gate and tried to kiss me.” “Ah!” said Mahlon Spellman. “Now we are getting at the meat of the matter. He tried to kiss you? And what did you do?” “Pushed him away and wiped my face—what any one would do,” said Mahala. “And then,” questioned Mahlon, “the brick?” “Yes,” admitted Mahala, “the brick.” “Now it happens,” said Mahlon, “that I picked up that piece of brick. Do you know where it came from?” “I do not,” said Mahala. “Well, I do,” said Mahlon. “It came from the border of one of your mother’s flower beds, just outside the parlour window. It was thrown from that direction. Some one who had not been invited to the party was watching it through the parlour window. Some one who doesn’t like Junior Moreland to think that you are his girl, threw the brick. Now, Mahala, women, even little girls of fourteen, are not sufficiently sophisticated to be in the first year of high school and at the same time so ignorant that they do not know which boy of their acquaintance is enough interested in them to risk taking the life of another boy who is guilty of no very great indiscretion.” “That all depends on the boy,” said Mahala. “If he is the son of the rich banker, it’s ‘no great indiscretion;’ if it had been the son of—say the washerwoman, for example, right now you’d be out trying to kill him.” “And I very probably should succeed in so far as I cared to go in such a premise,” said Mahlon promptly. “That’s exactly what I thought,” said Mahala. Slipping from his knee and walking to her dresser, she began very carefully unpinning the little wreath of silver-blue leaves that bound her hair. “I am waiting,” said Mahlon with all the dignity of which he was capable—and he was capable of a high degree of really impressive dignity. No one can practise anything hourly for fifty years and not attain a high degree of excellence.