“Oh! was that it?” exclaimed Margaret Elizabeth in a tone difficult to interpret.  Did she think it preposterous, or not?  It seemed to indicate she found something preposterous.  “Then you were disappointed in me,” she added.

Never would the Candy Man admit such a thing.  He had realised since then what a cad he must have seemed, but——­

“That, however, is neither here nor there,” she continued, “since I did not recognise you.  It was——­”

“Preposterous?” he suggested.

“Yes, preposterous, to suppose that I could.  Why, it was nearly dark that afternoon, and I——­”

“Please don’t rub it in.  I know.  You see I knew you so well.”

“Me?” cried Margaret Elizabeth.

“I had seen you pass, I mean.”

Again Miss Bentley said “Oh!” adding:  “You are also the person who laughed when I made an idiotic remark about lighthouses in the grocery.”

The Candy Man protested.  He had not laughed.

“Your eyes laughed.  That is how I first discovered my mistake.  Your resemblance to Mr. McAllister is remarkable.”

“So I have been told.”  The Candy Man shrugged his shoulders, ever so little.

“However, to go back, I think you owe me an explanation, Mr. Reynolds, considering how you allowed me to talk to you under a false impression.  I am not absolutely lacking in grey matter,” she added, while a smile curled her lips, “and I think you owe it to me to tell me why you became a Candy Man.”

“In return for the Fairy Godmother idea?” he asked mischievously.

Miss Bentley’s brows drew together.  “If you knew how bitterly I have regretted all the foolish things I said that day, you would not laugh,” she cried.

“Do not say that, please, Miss Bentley.  I beg your pardon, and I am not laughing.  I could not.  If you only knew what it all meant to me.  How I——­”

His distress was so genuine that Margaret Elizabeth was touched.  “Well, never mind now.  It can’t be helped, and I am willing to have it in return for the Fairy Godmother nonsense, if you choose to put it so.”

And now perforce the Candy Man must explain himself.

“You see,” he began, “I had been knocked out of everything through a bad accident that occurred at my home near Chicago—­a runaway.  Speaking of grey matter, there was some doubt for a time whether mine was not permanently injured.  However, I gradually recovered, but I was still forbidden for another six months at least to do any brain work, and ordered by my doctor to loaf in the fresh air.  Doing nothing when you are longing to get to work is no easy job.  I left home with the intention of going South, and stopped off here for no particular reason.  Perhaps I should have said that I have no family.  My father died something over a year ago.  Oddly enough, in front of the station here I met an Irish woman, once a servant in my father’s house.  She was overjoyed to see me, and poured out her troubles.  Her son, who ran a candy wagon, had been taken ill with fever, and his employers would not promise to keep the place for him, and altogether she was in hard lines, this boy being the main support of a large family.  So now you see how the idea occurred to me.  To amuse myself and keep the boy’s place.  And having no family or friends to be disgraced——­”