"What would you do if I should bat you one in the eye?"
"Eh, what?"
"What would you do to me?"
"You, too?" cried the bewildered Perkins. "Why on earth--"
"You'd dive into my knees, wouldn't you, and tip me over
backward?"
"Oh, that!" A slow grin overspread the space beneath the glasses.
"That was the idea."
"I know the trick. It's a good one--except for the guy that gets
it."
"It wouldn't have hurt him. He'd have landed in the fountain."
"So he would. What then?"
"Oh, I'd have held him there till he got cooled off, and then made
a run for it. A wet man can't catch a dry man."
"Say, son, YOU'RE a dry one, all right."
"Eh?"
"Wake up! I'm saying you're all right."
"Much obliged."
"You certainly took enough off him to rile a sheep. Why didn't you
do it?"
"Do what?"
"Tip him in."
Perkins glanced upward at the balcony where the vines had closed
upon a face that smiled.
"Oh," he said mildly, "he's a friend of a friend of mine."
IV
TWO ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE
ORCHIDS do not, by preference, grow upon a cactus plant. Little
though she recked of botany, Miss Brewster was aware of this
fundamental truth.
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