When Mrs. Fontenette, before any one else, rose to go--maybe my dislike of
her only made it seem so--but I believed she did it out of pure bafflement
and chagrin.
Not so believed her husband. He responded gratefully; yet lingered, still
listening to the entomologist, until she fondlingly chid him for
forgetting that while he had been all day in his swivel-chair, she had
passed the hours in unusual fatigues!
She declined his arm in our garden walk, and positively forbade me to cut
a rose for her--but with a grace almost maidenly. As I let them out, the
heat-lightning gleamed again low in the west. A playfulness came into M.
Fontenette's face and he murmured to me, "See se lightening."
"Yes," I replied, pressing his hand, "but I sink sare vill be no storm if
sare iss no sunder."
Mrs. Fontenette gave a faint gasp of impatience and left us at a run,
tripping fairily across the rough street at the only point visible to
those on the veranda. Fontenette scowled unaware as he started to follow,
and the next moment a short "aha!" escaped him. For, at her gate, to my
unholy joy, she stumbled just enough to make the whole performance
unspeakably ridiculous, and flirted into her cottage----
"In tears!" I offered to bet myself as I turned to rejoin my companions on
the veranda, and wished with all my soul the goggled Baron could have seen
it.
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