I will never touch ice cream again. I forgot you were
not a millionaire. I used to go there every day. But to-day I felt
some strange, sad presentiment of evil, and I was not myself. I ate
only eleven saucers."
"Say no more," said Claude, gently as he fondly caressed her waving
curls.
"And you are sure that you fully forgive me?" asked Vivien, gazing at
him entreatingly with dewy eyes of heavenly blue.
"Almost sure, little one," answered Claude, stooping and lightly
touching her snowy forehead with his lips. "I'll let you know
later on. I've got a month's salary down on Vanilla to win the
three-year-old steeplechase to-morrow; and if the ice-cream hunch
is to the good you are It again--see?"
XII
THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE
Justice-of-the-Peace Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office
smoking his elder-stem pipe. Half-way to the zenith the Cumberland
range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered
down the main street of the "settlement," cackling foolishly.
Up the road came a sound of creaking axles, and then a slow cloud of
dust, and then a bull-cart bearing Ransie Bilbro and his wife. The
cart stopped at the Justice's door, and the two climbed down. Ransie
was a narrow six feet of sallow brown skin and yellow hair.
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