"Whew!" Mr. Cone's lips puckered in a whistle.
His astonishment inspired Miss Gaskett to continue: "Yes, indeed! And once when I was out walking ever so far from everybody I met one face to face. My first impulse was to run, but I thought if I did so it might attack me, so, trying not to show that I was frightened, I picked up a stick, and just then----"
Seeing that Mr. Cone's gaze wandered, Miss Gaskett paused to learn the cause of it. She flushed as she found that Mrs. Budlong, with a smile wreathing her face, was listening to the recital.
"I'll tell you the rest when you are not so busy," Miss Mattie said, taking her key from Mr. Cone hastily.
Mrs. Budlong declared that her pleasure equalled his own when Mr. Cone expressed his delight at seeing her, and there was no thought on the minds of either as to the hotel rules she had violated or the food she had carried away from the table in the front of her blouse and her reticule.
"You are looking in splendid health, Mrs. Budlong," he asserted, quite as if that lady ever had looked otherwise.
"Yes, the change benefited me greatly." A stranger might have gathered from the plaintive note in her voice that prior to her trip she had been an invalid.
"You, too, found the Western country interesting?"
"Oh, very! At heart, Mr. Cone, I am a Child of Nature, and the primitive always appeals to me strongly," Mrs. Budlong hesitated and seemed debating. Having made her decision she asked in an undertone: "I can trust you?"
"Absolutely," replied Mr. Cone with emphasis, which intimated that the torture chamber could not wring from him any secret she chose to deposit.
"I had a very peculiar experience in the Yellowstone. I should never mention it, if you were not more like a brother to me than a stranger. It is altogether shocking."
Mr. Cone's eyes sparkled.
"Purely in a spirit of adventure, I took a bath in a beaver dam. It was in a secluded spot, and so well protected that I went in--er--I did not wear my bathing suit. The birds twittered. The arched trees made a green canopy above me. The sunshine sparkled on the placid bosom of the water. A gentle breeze, warm, sweet-scented, caressed me as I drank in the beauty of the scene.
"Then I plunged in--the temperature was warmer than tepid--delightful. I felt like a nymph, a water-sprite, or something, as I swam out to the middle and found a footing. The bottom was rather oozy, and there were green patches floating on the surface, otherwise it was ideal.