The Prairie Child

"But the thing I can't understand, Dinky-Dunk, is how you ever could." "Could what?" my husband asked in an aerated tone of voice. I had to gulp before I got it out. "Could kiss a woman like that," I managed to explain. Duncan Argyll McKail looked at me with a much cooler eye than I had expected. If he saw my shudder, he paid no attention to it. "On much the same principle," he quietly announced, "that the Chinese eat birds' nests." "Just what do you mean by that?" I demanded, resenting the fact that he could stand as silent as a December beehive before my morosely questioning eyes.