"I suppose you know that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, has resigned from the Custom House?"

I was, of course, careful not to give Juno the pleasure of seeing that she had surprised me. I bowed, and continued in silence to sip a little coffee; then, setting my coffee down, I observed that it would be some few days yet before the resignation could take effect; and, noticing that Juno was getting ready some new remark, I branched off and spoke to her of my excursion up the river this morning to see the azaleas in the gardens at Live Oaks.

"How lucky the weather is so magnificent!" I exclaimed.

"I shall be interested to hear," said Juno, "what explanation he finds to give Miss Josephine for his disrespectful holding out against her, and his immediate yielding to Miss Rieppe."

Here I deemed it safe to ask her, was she quite sure it had been at the instance of Miss Rieppe that John had resigned?

"It follows suspiciously close upon her arrival," stated Juno. She might have been speaking of a murder. "And how he expects to support a wife now--well, that is no affair of mine," Juno concluded, with a washing-her-hands-of-it air, as if up to this point she had always done her best for the wilful boy. She had blamed him savagely for not resigning, and now she was blaming him because he had resigned; and I ate my breakfast in much entertainment over this female acrobat in censure.