“It’s dinosaur foolishness again!” she thought, pungently.

He was in the full fettle of nonsense, his head a little to one side and lowered, while he looked through his eyebrows at his hearers, measuring the effect of his words.  She thought of that face when he called to Leddy, “I am going to kill you!” and felt the pulse of inquiry beat over all that lay in this man’s repertory between the two moods.

“Then, counting each one in his big, deep, bass voice, like this,” he was saying, “that funny little dwarf kept dropping oranges out of the tree on the big giant, who could not wiggle and was squeaking in protest in his little, old woman’s voice.  Every orange hit him right on the bridge of his nose, and he was saying:  ’You know I never could bear yellow!  It fusses me so.’”

“He doesn’t need any jelly!  I am going on!” Mary thought.

Then Jack saw a slim, pliant form hastening by and a brown profile under hair bare of a hat, with eyes straight ahead.  Mary might have been a unit of marching infantry.  The story stopped abruptly.

“Yes—­and—­and—­go on!” cried the children.

Jack held up his hand for silence.

“How do you do?” he called, and she caught in his tone and in her first glimpse of his face a certain mischievousness, as if he, who missed no points for idle enjoyment of any situation, had a satisfaction in taking her by surprise with his greeting.  This put her on her mettle with the quickness of a summons to fence.  She was as nonchalant as he.

“And you are doing well, I learn,” she answered.

“Oh, come in and hear it, Miss Ewold!  It’s the best one yet!” cried Belvedere Smith.  “And—­and—­”

“And—­and—­” began the chorus.

Mary went to the hedge.  She dropped the glass of jelly on the thick carpet of the privet.

“I have just brought my gift.  I’ll leave it here.  Belvy will bring it when the story is over.  I am glad you are recovering so rapidly.”

“And—­and—­” insisted the chorus.

“You oughtn’t to miss this story.  It’s a regular Jim dandy!” Belvedere shouted.

“Yes, won’t you come in?” Jack begged in serious urgency.  “I pride myself that it is almost intellectual toward the close.”

“I have no doubt,” she said, looking fairly at him from under her hand, which she held up to shade her face, so he saw only the snap of her eyes in the shadow.  “But I am in a hurry.”

And he was looking at a shoulder and a quarter profile as she turned away.

“Did you make the jelly yourself?” he called.

“Yes, I am not afraid of the truth—­I did!” she answered with a backward glance and not stopping.

“Oh, bully!” he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, in which she detected a strain of what she classified as impudence.

“But all the time the giant was fumbling in his pocket for his green handkerchief.  You know the dwarf did not like green.  It fussed him just as much as yellow fussed the giant.  But it was a narrow pocket, so narrow that he could only get his big thumb in, and very deep.  So, you see—­” and she heard the tale proceeding as she walked on to the end of the street, where she turned around and came back across the desert and through the garden.