ion warrants," I answered.
"But to return to this supper question: how will this day week suit
you?"

"It will suit me," Thorndyke answered, with a glance at his junior.

"And me too," said the latter; "so, if it will do for the Bellinghams,
we will consider it settled; but if they can't come you must fix another
night."

"Very well," I said, rising and knocking out my pipe, "I will issue the
invitation to-morrow. And now I must be off to have another slog at
those notes."

As I walked homewards I speculated cheerfully on the prospect of
entertaining my friends under my own (or rather Barnard's) roof, if they
could be lured out of their eremitical retirement. The idea had, in
fact, occurred to me already, but I had been deterred by the
peculiarities of Barnard's housekeeper. For Mrs. Gummer was one of those
housewives who make up for an archaic simplicity of production by
preparations on the most portentous and alarming scale. But this time I
would not be deterred. If only the guests could be enticed into my
humble lair, it would be easy to furnish the raw materials of the feast
from outside; and the consideration of ways and means occupied me
pleasantly until I found myself once more at my writing-table,
confronted by my voluminous notes on the incident of the North Syrian
War.

CHAPTER VIII

A MUSEUM IDYLL

Whether it was that practice revived a forgotten skill on my part, or
that Miss Bellingham had over-estimated the amount of work to be done, I
am unable to say. But whichever may have been the explanation, the fact
is that the fourth afternoon saw our task so nearly completed that I was
fain to plead that a small remainder might be left over to form an
excuse for yet one more visit to the reading-room.

Short, however, as had been the period of our collaboration, it had been
long enough to produce a great change in our relations to one another.
For there is no friendship so intimate and satisfying as that engendered
by community of work, and none--between man and woman, at any rate--so
frank and wholesome.

Every day I had arrived to find a pile of books with the places duly
marked and the blue covered quarto note-books in readiness. Every day we
had worked steadily at the allotted task, had then handed in the books
and gone forth together to enjoy a most companionable tea in the
milk-shop; thereafter to walk home by way of Queen Square, talking over
the day's work and discussing the state of t