"Go answer it, then; looks like you'd want to learn something!"

Miss Macpherson had heard the story an even greater number of times than Mr. Cone, but now she urged Mr. Penrose to repeat it, and he did so with such spirit and so vividly that she shuddered almost continuously through the telling. He concluded by a.s.serting emphatically that if it had not been for his foresight in providing himself with field-gla.s.ses, the steer would have been running over the flat with Aunt Lizzie empaled on its horns like a naturalist's b.u.t.terfly, before any one could have prevented it.

Mr. Appel opined, when Mr. Penrose had finished, that "Canby made a poor showing."

"I could have done as well myself if I had been able to get there." He added speculatively: "I suppose Canby and Miss Spenceley are engaged by now--or married. Wallie hasn't mentioned it in his letters, has he?"

Miss Macpherson replied in the negative.

"He might not, anyway," remarked Mrs. Appel. "Helene was a nice girl, and attractive, but I could see that she did not interest him."

Mrs. Budlong, who had one eye closed trying to thread a needle without her gla.s.ses, observed succinctly:

"Men are funny."

She intended to qualify her statement by saying that some are funnier than others, only, before she had time to do so, an exclamation from Miss Macpherson attracted her attention. Following Miss Macpherson's unbelieving stare she saw Helene and Wallie getting out of the motor-bus with a certain air which her experienced eye recognized as "married."

Mrs. Budlong specialized in detecting newly wedded people and she was seldom mistaken. Her cleverness along this line sometimes amounted to clairvoyancy, but, in this instance, no one needed to be supernaturally gifted to recognize the earmarks, for no man could look so radiantly happy as Wallie unless he had inherited a million dollars--or married the girl he wanted.

Miss Mary Macpherson threw her arms about her nephew's neck and kissed him with an impetuosity seemingly incompatible with a lady who wore a high starched collar in summer, and the others welcomed him with a sincerity and warmth which made his eyes grow misty.

It was hard to believe, as he looked at them beaming upon him in genuine fondness, that only a few short months before they had been barely speaking to him, or that he had wished The Happy Family had, as the saying is, a single neck that he might wring it.

Above the volley of questions and chatter he heard old Mr. Penrose's querulous voice reproaching him:

"I hope you have the grace to be ashamed of yourself for not telling us, Wallace!"

"If I look sheepish," Wallie replied, smiling, "it may be due to the nature of my new occupation. You see," in reply to their looks of inquiry, "Canby bought me out, to get rid of me, and for a far more munificent sum than I ever expected. I re-invested, and am now," with mock dignity, "a wool-grower--with one Mr. Fripp engaged as foreman."

Wallie's eyes twinkled as he added:

"I trust that the percentage of loss will not be so great as in the dude business."