e most. And lo! it had stopped in the very middle of the month.

"Did you wind it up last time?" asked Mary.

"Of course," he snapped. He had taken out his watch and was gazing at
it. He turned to Eva. "It's twenty to ten," he said. "You've missed your
connection at Turnhill--that's a certainty. I'm very sorry."

Obviously there was only one course open to a gallant man whose clock
was to blame: namely, to accompany Eva Harracles to Turnhill by car, to
accompany her on foot to Silverhays, then to walk back to Turnhill and
come home again by car. A young woman could not be expected to perform
that bleak and perhaps dangerous journey from Turnhill to Silverhays
alone after ten o'clock at night in November. Such was the clear course.
But he dared scarcely suggest it. He dared scarcely suggest it because
of his sister. He was afraid of Mary. The names of Richard Morfe and Eva
Harracles had already been coupled in the mouth of gossip. And
naturally Eva Harracles herself could not suggest that Richard should
sally out and leave his sister alone on this night specially devoted to
sisterliness and brotherliness. And of course, Eva thought, Mary will
never, never suggest it.

But Eva was wrong there.

To the amazement of both Richard and Eva, Mary calmly said:

"Well, Dick, the least you can do now is to see Miss Harracles home.
You'll easily be able to catch the last car back from Turnhill if you
start at once. I daresay I shall go to bed."

And in three minutes Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles were being sped
into the night by Mary Morfe.

The Morfes' house was at the corner of Trafalgar Road and Beech Street.
The cars stopped at that corner in their wild course towards the town
and towards Turnhill. A car was just coming. But instead of waiting for
it Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles deliberately turned their backs on
Trafalgar Road, and hurried side by side down Beech Street. Beech Street
is a short street, and ends in a nondescript unlighted waste patch of
ground. They arrived in the gloom of this patch, safe from all human
inquisitiveness, and then Richard Morfe warmly kissed Eva Harracles in
the mathematical centre of those lips of hers. And Eva Harracles showed
no resentment of any kind, nor even shame. Yet she had been very
carefully brought up. The sight would have interested Bursley immensely;
it would have appealed strongly to Bursley's strong sense of the
piquant.... That dry old stick Dick Morfe kissing one o