He stood for some time after Mrs. Stott had left him, reflecting enviously that his life was dull and uneventful, and that he must seem a poor stick to the heroes and heroines of such adventures. He wished that he could think of some incident in his past to match these tales of valour, but as he looked back the only thing that occurred to him was the occasion upon which the laundress had stolen the cooking sherry and gone to sleep in her chemise on the front veranda. She had fought like a tiger when the patrol wagon came for her, and he had been the one to hold her feet as she was carried to it. At the time he had been congratulated upon the able and fearless manner in which he had met the emergency, but a bout with an intoxicated laundress, though it had its dangers, seemed a piffling affair as compared to a hand-to-hand combat with a grizzly.
Gazing absently through the doorway and comforting himself by thinking that perhaps he, too, had latent courage which would rise to heights of heroism in propitious circumstances, he did not see Miss Eyester, who had come in the side entrance, until she stood before him.
He had not expected Miss Eyester, because she was usually employed during the winter, and it was only when a well-to-do relative sent her a check that she could afford a few weeks in Florida. But Miss Eyester was one of his favourites, and he immediately expressed the hope that she was to stay the entire season, while he noticed that she was wearing a mounted bear-claw for a hat-pin.
"No," she replied, blushing.
Not until then had Mr. Cone observed the Montana diamond flashing on her finger.
"Ah-h?" He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
Miss Eyester nodded.
"In January."
"A Western millionaire, I venture?" he suggested playfully.
"A stockman."
"Indeed?" A new respect was in Mr. Cone's manner. "Cattle?"
"Sheep," replied Miss Eyester, proudly. "Mr. Fripp is herding at present."
* * * * * In a week Mr. Cone was as familiar with the glorious summer which The Happy Family had spent in the West as if he had been there. Although he knew the story by heart he still thrilled when Mr. Penrose backed the bear up against a tree and separated its jaws until it "moaned like a human."
He continued to listen with flattering attention to the recital of the intrepid spinster who would have given battle to a hungry coyote if it had attacked her, as he did to the account of Mr. Stott's reckless courage in putting to flight a notorious outlaw who had hired out as a cook for some sinister purpose.