“A tramp stopped here the other day, and—­I was frightened a little,” she was explaining, pink-cheeked.  “So aunt Meeker found this up in the loft and she thought it would do to—­to bluff with.”

Weary aimed carefully at a venturesome and highly inquisitive gopher and pulled, with some effort, the rusted trigger.  The gopher stood upon his hind feet and chipped derisively.

“You see, it just insults him.  Yuh could’nt scare a blind man with it—­ Look here!  If yuh go pouting up your lips like that again, something’s going to happen ’em.  There’s a limit to what a man can stand.”

Miss Satterly hastily drew her mouth into a thin, untempting, red streak, for she had not seen Weary Davidson, on an average, twice a week for the last four months for nothing.  He was not the man to bluff.

“Of course,” she said resentfully, “you can make fun of it—­but all the same, it’s better than nothing.  It answers the purpose.”

Weary turned his head till he could look straight into her eyes—­a thing he seemed rather fond of doing, lately.  “What purpose?  It sure isn’t ornamental; it’s a little the hardest looker I ever saw in the shape of a gun.  And it won’t scare anything.  If you want a gun, why, take one that can make good.  You can have mine; just watch what a different effect it has.”

He reached backward and drew a shining thing from his pocket, flipped it downward—­and the effect was unmistakably different.  The gopher leaped and rolled backward and then lay still, and Miss Satterly gave a little, startled scream and jumped quite off the doorstep.

“Don’t yuh see?  You couldn’t raise any such a dust with yours.  If yuh pack a gun, you always want to pack one that’s ready and willing to do business on short notice.  I’ll let yuh have this, if you’re sure it’s safe with yuh.  I’d hate to have you shooting yourself accidental.”

Weary raised innocent eyes to her face and polished the gun caressingly with his handkerchief.  “Try it once,” he urged.

The schoolma’am was fond of boasting that she never screamed at anything.  She had screamed just now, over a foolish little thing, and it goes without saying she was angry with the cause.  She did not sit down again beside him, and she did not take the gun he was holding up invitingly to her.  She put her hands behind her and stood accusingly before him with the look upon her face which never failed to make sundry small Beckmans and Pilgreens squirm on their benches when she assumed it in school.

“Mr. Davidson”—­not Weary Davidson, as she was wont to call him—­“you have killed my pet gopher.  All summer I have fed him, and he would eat out of my hand.”

Weary cast a jealous eye upon the limp, little animal, searched his heart for remorse and found none.  Ornery little brute, to get familiar with his schoolma’am!

“I did not think you could be so wantonly cruel, and I am astonished and—­and deeply pained to discover that fatal flaw in your character.”