"I'm sorry," cried Conkling, nettling brick red as he rose to his feet with his hat in his hand. "I beg your pardon," he murmured again as he essayed a jackknife bow in which deference was not visibly shot through with mockery.
"I presume you are a stranger in this neighborhood," she said in an acridly condoning tone of voice.
"You are quite correct in that presumption," retorted Conkling, a little tired of being treated like an urchin caught in a cherry tree.
"Otherwise you would have respected the long-established wishes of the owner of this garden," concluded his enemy, with a glance at the No Trespassing sign.
"Undoubtedly, if I'd known in time," admitted the intruder.
The woman in the half mittens shifted her position a little.
"Since you paint, I suppose you are interested in paintings," she suggested.
Along that glacial frontier Conkling thought he detected certain surface melt-
