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On reflection, I have to admit that she did in fact care for one thing. That one thing was the look on her brother’s face when he should learn that she, the faithful sardonic sister, having incomprehensibly become indispensable and all in all to a bank cashier, meant to desert him. She was afraid of that look. She trembled at the fore-vision of it.

Still, Richard had to be informed, and the world had to be informed, for the silken dalliance between Mary and Simon had been conducted with a discretion and a secrecy more than characteristic of their age and dispositions. It had been arranged between the lovers that Simon should call on that Friday evening, when he would be sure to catch Richard in his easy chair, and should, in presence of Mary, bluntly communicate to Richard the blunt fact.

“What’s he gone out for? Anything special?” asked Simon.

Mary explained the circumstances.

“The truth is,” she finished, “that girl is just throwing herself at Dick’s head. There’s no doubt of it. I never saw such work!”

“Well,” said Simon Loggerheads, “of course, you know, there’s been a certain amount of talk about them. Some folks say that your brother–er–began–“

“And do you believe that?” demanded Mary.

“I don’t know,” said Simon. By which he meant diplomatically to convey that he had had a narrow escape of believing it, at any rate.

“Well,” said Mary, with conviction, “you may take it from me that it isn’t so. I know Dick. Eva Harracles may throw herself at his head till there’s no breath left in her body, and it’ll make no difference to Dick. Do you see Dick a married man? I don’t. I only wish he would take it into his head to get married. It would make me much easier in my mind. But all the same I do think it’s downright wicked that a girl should fling herself at him, right at him. Fancy her calling to-night! It’s the sort of thing that oughtn’t to be encouraged.”

“But I understood you to say that you yourself had told him to see her home,” Simon Loggerheads put in. “Isn’t that encouraging her, as it were?”

“Ah!” said Mary, with a smile. “I only suggested it to him because it came over me all of a sudden how nice it would be to have you here all alone! He can’t be back much before twelve.”

To such a remark there is but one response. A sofa is, after all, made for two people, and the chance of the servant calling on them was small.

“And so the clock stopped!” observed Simon Loggerheads.

“Yes,” said Mary. “If it hadn’t been for the sheer accident of that clock stopping, we shouldn’t be sitting here on this sofa now, and Dick would be in that chair, and you would just be beginning to tell him that we are engaged.” She sighed. “Poor Dick! What on earth will he do?”

“Strange how things happen!” Simon reflected in a low voice. “But I’m really surprised at that clock stopping like that. It’s a clock that you ought to be able to depend on, that clock is.”

He got up to inspect the timepiece. He knew all about the clock, because he had been chairman of the presentation committee which had gone to Manchester to buy it.

“Why!” he murmured, after he had toyed a little with the pendulum, “it goes all right. Its tick is as right as rain.”

“How odd!” responded Mary.

Simon Loggerheads set the clock by his own impeccable watch, and then sat down again. And he drew something from his waistcoat pocket and slid it on to Mary’s finger.

Mary regarded her finger in silent ecstasy, and then breathed “How lovely!”–not meaning her finger.

“Shall I stay till he comes back?” asked Simon.

“If I were you I shouldn’t do that,” said Mary. “But you can safely stay till eleven-thirty. Then I shall go to bed. He’ll be tired and short [curt] when he gets back. I’ll tell him myself to-morrow morning at breakfast. And you might come to-morrow afternoon early, for tea.”

Simon did stay till half-past eleven. He left precisely when the clock, now convalescent, struck the half-hour. At the door Mary said to him:

“I won’t have any secrets from you, Simon. It was I who stopped that clock. I stopped it while they were bending down looking for music. I wanted to be as sure as I could of a good excuse for me suggesting that he ought to take her home. I just wanted to get him out of the house.”

“But why?” asked Simon.

“I must leave that to you to guess,” said Mary, with a hint of tartness, but smiling.

Loggerheads and Richard Morfe met in Trafalgar Road.

“Good-night, Morfe.”

“‘night, Loggerheads!”

And each passed on, without having stopped.

You can picture for yourself the breakfast of the brother and sister.