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Abner reddened. "I thought you didn't know where I was?"

Adelaide shrugged a smooth shoulder. "When I'm interested in a man I would hardly lose him in my own parlour.—You haven't said how many farms you own—"

"I don't know. Buck Sharp is finding out."

"Buck Sharp!"

"Yes."

"Poor child, you do need a guardian."

She reached over, took one of his hands, spread it on her silk knee palm up, and perused it after the manner of a fortune teller.

"What's wrong with you, Mr. Teeftallow, is, you have a long tapering hand. It is calloused from work, but really it's the hand of a dreamer and an idler. I venture you sit around and dream all sorts of things and do almost nothing, don't you?"

"No-o," denied Abner, unable to recognize this description of himself.

"How came you to leave the poorhouse?" probed Adelaide. "Weren't you turned out?"

"No-o, not exactly."

"Yes, you were—exactly. Beatrice told me all about it. It was right pathetic, I call it. I've thought about it a lot."

Abner sat with his hand on the girl's knee, flushing uncomfortably. Adelaide placed her own small square palm on Abner's and looked at him with a kind of tenderness in her face.

"That's why you are so appealing, Abner," she continued. "When a man just constitutionally can't help himself, some woman feels like she's got to do it for him. The reason you are so wishy-washy is, you feel instead of think—and that's appealing. You know these thinking brains are terrible, Abner. They go straight, straight—you can coax, sob, implore, but you can't change their course because they're going somewhere. Most men are not like that, Abner. Most of 'em are like you, easy, wishy-washy fellows, and we