"Would you like to try a genuine friendship with one. Polk?" I asked, and again struck from the shoulder--with my eyes.
"Help! Not if you mean yourself, beautiful," he answered promptly and with fervor. "I wouldn't trust myself with you one minute off-guard like that."
"Will you go over and sit in that chair while I tell you something calmly, quietly, and seriously? It'll give you a new sensation and maybe it will be good for you." I looked him straight in the face and the battle of our eyes was something terrific. I had made up my mind to have it out with him then and there. There was nothing else to do. I would be frank and courageous and true to my vow--and accept the consequences.
He slid along the railing of the porch and down into the chair in almost a daze of bewilderment.
"Polk," I began, concealing a gulp of terror, "I love you more than I can possibly--"
[Illustration: "Say, Polk, I let the Pup git hung by her apron to the wheel of your car."]
"Say, Polk, I let the Pup git hung by her apron to the wheel of your car out in the road and her head is dangersome kinder upside down. It might run away. Can you come and git her loose for me?"
Henrietta's calmness under dire circumstances was a lesson to both Polk and me, for with two gasps that sounded as one we both raced across the porch, down the path and out to the road where Folk's Hupp runabout stood by the worn old stone post that had tethered the horses of the wooers of many generations of the maids of my house.
But, prompt as our response to Henrietta's demand for rescue had been, Cousin James was there before us. He stood in the middle of the dusty road with the tousled mite in his arms, soothing her frightened sobs against his cheek with the dearest tenderness and patting Sallie on the back with the same comforting.
"Oh, Henrietta, how could you nearly kill your little sister like this?" Sallie sobbed. "Please say something positive to her, James!"
"Henrietta," began Cousin James with a suspicion of embarrassment at Polk's and my presence at the domestic scene. Polk choked a chuckle and I could have murdered him.
"Wait a minute," said Henrietta, in her most commanding voice. "Sallie, didn't you ask me to take that Pup from Aunt Dilsie, 'cause of the phthisic, and keep her quiet while the Kit got a nap, and didn't I ask you if it would be all right if I got her back whole and clean?"