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p>She extended a five-dollar bill. He took it with the expression of one to whom a nice, shiny blade has just been handed for purposes of hara-kiri.
"I have missed you," she pursued with diabolical plaintiveness. "Our child--our adopted child," she corrected, the pink running up under her skin, "has been crying for you."
"Go away!" said the Tyro hoarsely.
"Are these the manners of a Perfect Pig?" she reproached him. And with adorable sauciness she warbled a nursery ditty:--
"Lady once loved a pig. 'Honey,' said she, 'Pig, will you marry me?' 'Wrrumph!' said he.
"I can't grunt very nicely," she admitted. "You do it."
"Go away," he implored, gazing from side to side like a trapped animal. "Somebody'll see you. They'll lock you up."
"Me? Why?" Her eyes opened wide in the loveliness of feigned surprise. "Much more likely you. I doubt whether you really should be at large. Such a queer-acting person!"
"I--I'll write and explain," he said desperately.
"If you do, I'll show the letter to the captain."
He regarded her with a stricken gaze. "Wh--why the captain?"
"Being a helpless and unchaperoned young lady," she explained primly, "he is my natural guardian and protector. I think I see him coming now."
Legend is enriched by the picturesque fates of those who have historically affronted Heaven with prevarications no more flagrant than this. But did punishment, then, descend upon the fair, false, and frail perpetrator of this particular taradiddle? Not at all. The Tyro was the sole sufferer. Had the word been a bullet he could scarcely have dropped more swiftly. When next he appeared to the enraptured gaze of the heckler, he was emerging, ventre à terre, from beneath the far end of the life-boat.
"I'll be in my deck-chair between eight and nine to receive explanations and apologies," was her Parthian shot, as he rose and fled.
At the time named, the Tyro took particularly good care to be