years older.

At last she spoke.

"Is the little plot finished?" she asked.

"Very nearly," he replied

"And is it decorous in episode, cheerful in tone, and forcible in moral
tendency?"

"All these it is, and more."

"Then--please, sir, I have a question to ask."

"Ask, maiden," said Dick.

"I want to know why you keep that filthy cloth in your pocket."

"And why this sudden curiosity about a trifle?" His hand felt the thing
as if he had forgotten it.

"Because," said Amaryllis, "I can't possibly sit closer to you if you
don't throw it away."

Dick rose, taking the bundle carefully from his pocket.

"It's a curio--a relic. I'll show it you some day," he said, laying it
in a corner of the rack.

"Not now?"

"Not now."

And then there came over his face an expression of mixed humour and
triumph.

"By the bloomin' idol made of mud!" he cried, "you've given me the
climax. It makes the story more moral than ever."

And he murmured, as if only for himself: "Which side, O Bud! Which
side?"

A little later he put up both windows.

"It'll be awfully hot," said Amaryllis.

"Let's be absolutely silent for a bit," said Dick. "With our ears to the
partition, we might hear something."

With intense concentration, they listened for several minutes.

"It's no good," said Dick at last. "Talking, talking all the time, but
the train makes too much row, and the padding's too thick."

"I heard something," said the girl. "Not words--but the different tones
of two voices, arguing. One wants to do something, and the other
doesn't. He's afraid, I think."

"M'm!" grunted Dick.

"The brave one's here--with his back to me. He's strong and heavy, I
think, because his voice is growly, and he sits back hard now and then,
and I can feel the partition bulge a little. And then--he keeps fiddling
with something that clicks."

"Clicks? How? Like the hammer of an empty gun?" asked Dick, puzzled.

The girl leaned forward and touched the spring lock of the carriage
door.

"No. Heavier than a pistol. Clicky and thumpy, like this lock if you
pull it and let go."

Dick's face beamed with satisfaction.

"Don't touch it--I know," he said. "I suppose you'll be wanting half the
proceeds, and your name as part author."

"What on earth d'you mean, Dick?"

"Collaboration. You've completed the plot."

He changed his seat to face her from the opposite corner; looked at his
watch, and thereafter gazed steadily from the wind