“Not even to a woman?” she questioned incredulously.

“No,” he answered positively, “I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

“And why wouldn’t he?” she asked.

“Well,” Skinny replied, “for one thing he don’t give a darn.  Th’ Ramblin’ Kid don’t care what anybody, man, woman or anything else thinks about him or whether they like what he says or not so there ain’t any use of him lying.  Maybe he wouldn’t tell what was in his mind unless you asked him, but if you did ask him he’d say what it was whether he thought it satisfied you or not.  He’s funny that way.  He just naturally don’t seem to be built for telling lies and he wouldn’t do it—­”

“Oh, Skinny, poor simple Skinny!” Carolyn June laughed.  “You don’t know men—­men when they’re dealing with women!  Through all the unnamed years of my life I’ve never found one man who was absolutely truthful when talking with a ‘female.’  They think they have to lie to women.  They do it either to keep from hurting them—­or else they do it intentionally for the purpose of hurting them, one or the other!  And they are so stupid!  No man can hide anything long from a woman—­”

Reaching over she jerked a spray of tiny roses from the rambler at the window near which they were standing; tapping the blossoms against her lips, beginning to smile whimsically, she continued:  “Why, I can almost read your own thoughts right now!  If I wanted to I could tell you more about what is in your mind than you yourself could tell—­”

“Could you?” Skinny said, a guilty look coming in his eyes.

“For one thing,” Carolyn June went on, ignoring the inane question, “you are in love—­”

“I ain’t!” the over-hasty denial slipped from his lips unintentionally.

“Lie!” she laughed, “you can’t help telling ’em, can you?  And you are thinking—­” She paused while her eyes rested demurely on the roses in her hand.

“What am I thinking?” Skinny asked breathlessly.

Before she could reply an agonized spitting, yowling and hissing, accompanied by the rattle of tin, came from behind the kitchen.  “What’s that?” Carolyn June cried half frightened at the instant a yellow house cat, his head fastened in an old tomato can, came bouncing backward, clawing and scratching, from around the corner.

“Gee whiz!” Skinny exclaimed, “it’s that darned cat again—­Sing Pete goes and dabs butter in the bottoms of the cans and the fool cat sticks his head in trying to lick it out and gets fastened.  It looks like the blamed idiot would learn sometime.  It’s what I call a rotten joke anyhow!”

Sing Pete appeared at the kitchen door cackling with fiendish joy at the success of his ruse.

Carolyn June stared, apparently stricken dumb by the antics of the struggling animal.

“Sun-fish!  Go to it—­you poor deluded son-of-sorrow!” The Ramblin’ Kid, who, unnoticed by Carolyn June and Skinny, at that moment had come from the corral and stood leaning against the fence, chuckled half pityingly, yet making no move toward the creature.