to sit at the head of my table, to order my house, my judgment
justifies itself. I have a fancy always for the best. When I can't gratify
it I do without."

"Thank you." She made him a gay little mock curtsy "I had heard you were
no carpet-knight, Mr. Ridgway. But rumor is a lying jade, for I am being
told--am I not?--that in case I don't take pity on you, the lone future of
a celibate stretches drear before you."

"Oh, certainly."

Having come to the end of that passage, she tried another. "A young man
told me yesterday you were a fighter. He said he guessed you would stand
the acid. What did he mean?"

Ridgway was an egoist from head to heel. He could voice his own praises by
the hour when necessary, but now he side-stepped her little trap to make
him praise himself at second-hand.

"Better ask him."

"ARE you a fighter, then?"

Had he known her and her whimsies less well, he might have taken her
audacity for innocence.

"One couldn't lie down, you know."

"Of course, you always fight fair," she mocked.