"Sleepin'-soot?" A pair of round, wondering eyes stared out through the old woman's glasses.
The girl pointed at the silk trousers and jacket lying just inside the nearest trunk, and the farm-wife picked them up gingerly, letting them unfold as she did so. Just for one moment she inspected them, then she hurriedly let them drop back into the trunk as though they were some dangerous reptile, and, folding her arms, glared into the girl's smiling face in comical reproach.
"You sure don't wear them pants, miss--at night? Not reely?" she exclaimed in horrified tones.
The girl's smile hardened.
"Why, yes. Lots of girls wear sleeping-suits nowadays."
"You don't say!"
The old woman pursed up her lips in strong disapproval. Then, with a disdainful sniff, she went on-"Wot gals ain't comin' to I don't know, I'm sure. Wot with silk next their skin an' them draughty stockin's, as you might say, things is gettin' to a pretty pass. Say, I wouldn't put myself into them pants, no, not if the President o' the United States was to stand over me an' wouldn't let me put on nuthin' else."
The girl refrained from reply, but the obvious impossibility of the feat appealed to her sense of humor. However, the solution of her riddle was of prevailing interest, so she returned again to her questioning.
"Did he say how he found me?" she demanded. "Did he tell you any--any particulars of what happened to the cart, and--and the teamster?"
"No, ma'm--miss, beggin' your pardin,--that he didn't. I never see sech a fresh feller outside a noospaper office. An' him the owner of this farm that was, but isn't, as you might say. You take my word for it he'll come to a bad end, he sure will. Wot with them wicked eyes of his, an' that black, Dago-lookin' hair. I never did see a feller who looked more like a scallawag than him. Makes me shiver to think of him a-carryin' you in his two arms. Wher' from sez I--an' why?"
"Because I couldn't walk, I expect," the girl replied easily.
The farm-wife shook a fat, warning finger at her.
"Oh, ma'm--miss--that's wot he says! You jest wait till you've got more experience o' scallawags like him an' you'll sure know. Wot I sez is men's that full o' tricks wher' females is to be deceived it 'ud take 'em a summer vacation sortin' 'emselves out. Men is shockin' scallawags," she finished up, flinging the shoes pell-mell into the open trunk.
A further rescue of her property was necessary and the girl protested.
"Please don't bother any more with those clothes," she cried hurriedly. "I'll see to them myself." Then, as the woman proceeded to mop her perspiring brow with a pair of silk stockings, she sprang up and thrust a hand-towel toward her. "Use this; you'll find it more absorbent than--er--silk."