chilly, highly varnished "green rep" sofa, albeit to him it was a bank
in a bower of enchantment. Then she said, with adorable reproachfulness,
"You don't ask what I did with the body."
Mr. Edward Brice started. He was young, and unfamiliar with the evasive
expansiveness of the female mind at such supreme moments.
"The body--oh, yes--certainly."
"I buried it myself--it was suthin too awful!--and the gang would have
been sure to have found it, and the empty belt. I burned THAT. So that
nobody knows nothin'."
It was not a time for strictly grammatical negatives, and I am
afraid that the girl's characteristically familiar speech, even when
pathetically corrected here and there by the influence of the convent,
endeared her the more to him. And when she said, "And now, Mr. Edward
Brice, sit over at that end of the sofy and let's talk," they talked.
They talked for an hour, more or less continuously, until they were
surprised by a discreet cough and the entrance of Mrs. Tarbox. Then
there was more talk, and the discovery that Mr. Brice was long due at
the office.
"Ye might drop in, now and then, whenever ye feel like it, and Flo is at
home," suggested Mrs. Tarbox at parting.
Mr. Brice DID drop in frequently during the next month. On one of
these occasions Mr. Tarbox accompanied him to the door. "And now--ez
everything is settled and in order, Mr. Brice, and ef you should be
wantin' to say anything about it to your bosses at the office, ye may
mention MY name ez Flo Dimwood's second cousin, and say I'm a depositor
in their bank. And," with greater deliberation, "ef anything at any time
should be thrown up at ye for marryin' a niece o' Snapshot Harry's, ye
might mention, keerless like, that Snapshot Harry, under the name o'
Henry J. Dimwood, has held shares in their old bank for years!"
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS
PART I
Mr. Jack Fleming stopped suddenly before a lifeless and decaying
redwood-tree with an expression of disgust and impatience. It was the
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