tly--with grim humour. "Come here. Come right
inside."

Maria stopped, then obeyed.

"Do you know how much you've let me in for, with your wicked,
disobedient temper?"

"I'd have you know, mum--" Maria retorted, putting her hands on the hips
and forwarding her face.

Their previous scene together was as nothing to this one in sound and
fury. But the close was peace. The next day half Bursley knew that Maria
had gone back to Mrs Garlick, and there was a facetious note about the
episode in the "Day by Day" column of the _Signal_. The truth was that
Maria and Mrs Garlick were "made for each other." Maria would not look
at the ordinary "place." The curtains, as much as remained, were sent to
the wash, but as three months had elapsed the mistress reckoned that she
had won. Still, the cleansing of the curtains had run up to appreciably
more than a sovereign per curtain.

The warehouseman did not ask for Maria's hand. The stridency of her
behaviour in court had frightened him.

Mrs Garlick's chief hobby continues to be the small economy. Happily,
owing to a rise in the value of a land and a fortunate investment, she
is in fairly well-to-do circumstances.

As she said one day to an acquaintance, "It's a good thing I can afford
to keep a tight hand on things."

WHY THE CLOCK STOPPED

I

Mr Morfe and Mary Morfe, his sister, were sitting on either side of
their drawing-room fire, on a Friday evening in November, when they
heard a ring at the front door. They both started, and showed symptoms
of nervous disturbance. They both said aloud that no doubt it was a
parcel or something of the kind that had rung at the front door. And
they both bent their eyes again on the respective books which they were
reading. Then they heard voices in the lobby--the servant's voice and
another voice--and a movement of steps over the encaustic tiles towards
the door of the drawing-room. And Miss Morfe ejaculated:

"Really!"

As though she was unwilling to believe that somebody on the other side
of that drawing-room door contemplated committing a social outrage, she
nevertheless began to fear the possibility.

In the ordinary course it is not considered outrageous to enter a
drawing-room--even at nine o'clock at night--with the permission and
encouragement of the servant in charge of portals. But the case of the
Morfes was peculiar. Mr Morfe was a bachelor aged forty-two, and looked
older. Mary Morfe was a spinster aged thirty-