“How did I act?” asked the Mayor, humbly. It was eight o’clock the next morning, and he was standing before Berty as she took her breakfast alone, Grandma having gone across the street to visit her hysterical patient.

Berty thoughtfully drank some coffee.

“I’d take a cup, too, if you’d offer it to me,” he said, still more humbly, and sitting down opposite her. “Somehow or other I hadn’t much appetite this morning, and only took a bite of breakfast.”

Berty, still in silence, poured him out a cup of strong coffee, and put in it a liberal supply of cream. Then, pushing the sugar-bowl toward him, she again devoted herself to her own breakfast.

“You’re ashamed of me,” said the Mayor, lifting lumps of sugar into his cup with a downcast air. “I gabbled.”

“Yes, you gabbled,” said Berty, quietly.

[151]

“But I’m going to make an impression,” said the Mayor, slapping the table with one hand. “I’m going to make that woman look at me, and size me up, if she doesn’t do anything more.”

“She sized you up last night,” said Berty, mournfully.

“Did she say anything about me?” asked Mr. Jimson, eagerly.

“Not a word—but she looked unutterable things.”

“Do you think I’d better call on her?” he asked, desperately.

“Oh, gracious, no!” cried Berty, “you’d spoil everything. Leave matters to me in future.”

“I thought I might explain,” he said, with a crestfallen air.

“What would you explain?” asked Berty, cuttingly.

“I’d tell her—well, I’d just remark casually after we’d spoken about the weather that she might have noticed that there was something queer, or that I was a little out in some of my remarks—”

“Well,” said Berty, severely, “what then?”

“I’d just inform her, in a passing way, that I’d always been a steady man, and that if she would kindly overlook the past—”

[152]

“Oh! oh!” ejaculated Berty, “you wouldn’t hint to a lady that she might have thought you were under the influence of some stimulant?”

“N-n-no, not exactly,” blundered the Mayor, “but I might quote a little poetry about the intoxication of her presence—I cut a fine piece out of the paper the other day. Perhaps I might read it to her.”

Berty put her arm down on the table and laughed. “Well, if you’re not the oddest man. You are just lovely and original.”

The Mayor looked at her doubtfully, and drank his coffee. Then he got up. “I don’t want you to think I’m not in earnest about this business. I never give up anything I’ve set my mind on, and I like that woman, and I want her to be Mrs. Peter Jimson.”

Berty shivered. “Oh, dear, dear! how badly you will feel if she makes up her mind to be Mrs. Somebody Else—but I’ll help you all I can. You have a great ally in me.”

“I’m obliged to you,” said the Mayor, gruffly.

“I was ashamed of those other two men last evening,” said Berty, getting up and walking out toward the hall with him. “I wanted to shake them.”

[153]

“I didn’t take much stock in their actions,” said the Mayor, indifferently. “They just felt funny, and would have carried on whether I had been there or not.”

“How forgiving in you—how noble,” said Berty, warmly.

“Nothing noble about it—I know men, and haven’t any curiosity about them. It’s you women that bother the life out of me. I don’t know how to take you.”

“It’s only a little past eight,” said Berty, suddenly. “Can’t you come down to the wharf with me? You don’t need to go to town yet.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said the Mayor, reluctantly.

Berty caught up her sailor hat, and tripped beside him down to the street, talking on any subject that came uppermost.

The Mayor, however, returned to his first love. “Now, if there was something I could do to astonish her,” he said. “If her house got on fire, and I could rescue her, or if she fell out of a boat into the river, and I could pull her in.”

“She’s pretty tall,” said Berty, turning and surveying the rather short man by her side. “I doubt if you could pull her in.”

[154]

“If I got a good grip I could,” he said, confidently.

“The worst of it is, those heroic things don’t happen once in an age,” said Berty, in a matter-of-fact voice, “and, anyway, a woman would rather you would please her in a thousand little ways than in one big one.”

“What do you call little ways?” asked the Mayor.

“Oh, being nice.”

“And what is niceness?” he went on, in an unsatisfied voice.

“Niceness?—well, it is hard to tell. Pick up her gloves if she drops them, never cross her, always kiss her good-bye in the morning, and tell her she’s the sweetest woman in the world when you come home in the evening.”

“Well, now,” said the Mayor, in an aggrieved voice, “as if I’m likely to have the chance. You won’t even let me call on her.”

“No, don’t you go near her,” said Berty, “not for awhile. Not till I sound her about you.”

“How do you think I stand now with her?” asked Mr. Jimson, with a downcast air.

“Well, to tell the truth,” said Berty, frankly, “I think it’s this way. She wasn’t inclined to pay much attention to you at first, not any more than[155] if you were a table or a chair. When you began to talk she observed you, and I think she was saying to herself, ‘What kind of a man is this?’ Then when Grandma drove Tom and Roger out of the room, I think she wanted to laugh.”

“Then she must have been a little interested,” said the man, breathlessly.

“No,” said Berty, gravely, “when a woman laughs at a man, it’s all up with him.”

“Then you think I might as well give up?” said the Mayor, bitterly.

“Not at all,” said his sympathizer, kindly. “There may fall to you some lucky chance to reinstate yourself.”

“Now what could it be?” asked Mr. Jimson, eagerly. “What should I be looking out for?”

“Look out for everything,” said Berty, oracularly. “She will forget about the other night.”

“I thought you told me the other day that women never forget.”

“Neither they do,” said Berty, promptly, “never, never.”

“According to all I can make out,” said the Mayor, with a chagrined air, “you women have all the airs and graces of a combine, and none of its understandabilities. Your way of ............