you a receipt?"

* * * * *

Julia said afterwards that receipts for the payment of such debts were
unnecessary and never given; which was perhaps as well, for the one
she received in the dusk was not of a kind recognised at law. Could it
afterwards have been produced it would not have proved the payment of
money, though at the time it proved several things, principally the
fact that, though friendship and comradeship are fine and excellent
things, there are simple primitive passions which leap up through them
and transfigure them and forget them, and it is these which make man
man, and woman woman, and life worth living, and the world worth
winning and losing, too, and bring the kingdom of heaven to earth
again.

It also proved how exceedingly firmly a man who is in the habit of
wearing a single eyeglass must screw it into his eye, for, as Julia
remarked with some surprise, the one which interested her did not fall
out.

* * * * *

Mr. Gillat came home with his fir-cones at a quarter to five. And when
he came he saw that, to him, most fascinating sight--a motor-car,
standing empty and quiet by the gate. He looked at it with keen
interest, then he looked round the empty landscape for its owner, and
not seeing him, wondered if he was in the house. He put away the cones
and came to the conclusion that the owner was not there and the car
was an abandoned derelict. For which, perhaps, he may be forgiven, for
there was no light at the parlour window and no sound of voices that
he could hear from the kitchen; even when he opened the door and
walked in he did not in the firelight see any one besides Julia at
first.

"Julia," he said, bringing in the astonishing news, "there is a
motor-car outside!"

"Yes," Julia answered composedly; "but it is going away soon."

"Not very soon," another voice spoke out of the gloom of the chimney
corner, and Johnny jumped as he recognised it.

"Dear me!" he said; "dear me! Mr. Rawson-Clew! How do you do? I am
pleased to see you."

The motor did not go away very soon; it stayed quite as long, rather
longer, in fact, than Mr. Gillat expected. And when it did go, he did
not have the pleasure of seeing it start; he somehow got shut in the
kitchen while Julia went out to the gate.

When she came back she shut the door carefully, then turned to him,
and he noticed how her eyes were shining. "Johnny," she said, "I am a
selfi