pulling herself up short. The
answer was never far away. "Oh, yes--Helen and Burdon Woodward. Well, I'm
glad she's going out with Wally today. She's safe enough with him."

It had been arranged that Wally should drive Helen to Hartford to do some
shopping, and they were expected back about nine o'clock in the evening.
But nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock and midnight came--and
still no sign of Wally's car.

"They must have had an accident," thought Mary, and at first she pictured
this as a slight affair which simply called for a few hours' delay at a
local garage--perhaps the engine had overheated, or the battery had
failed.

But when one o'clock struck, and still no word from the absent pair,
Mary's fancies grew more tragic.

By two o'clock she imagined the car overturned at the bottom of some
embankment, and both of them badly hurt. At three o'clock she began to
have such dire forebodings that she went and woke up Aunt Cordelia, and
was on the point of telephoning Wally's mother when the welcome rumbling
of a car was heard under the porte cochere. It was Wally and Helen, and
though Helen looked pale she had that air of ownership over her
apologetic escort which every woman understands.

Mary already divined the end of the story.

"We were coming along all right," said Wally, "and would have been home
before ten. But when we were about nine miles from nowhere and going over
a bad road, I had a puncture.

"Of course that delayed me a little--to change the wheels--but when I
tried to start the car again, she wouldn't go.

"I fussed and fixed for a couple of hours, it seems to me, and then I
thought I'd better go to the nearest telephone and have a garage send a
car out for us. But Helen, poor girl, was tired and of course I couldn't
leave her there alone. So I tackled the engine again and just when I was
giving up hope, a car came along.

"They couldn't take us in--they were filled--but they promised to wake up
a garage man in the next town and send him to the rescue. It was half
past two when he turned up, but it didn't take him long to find the
trouble, and here we are at last."

He drew a full breath and turned to Helen.

"Of course I wouldn't have cared a snap," he said, "if it hadn't been for
poor Helen here."

"Oh, I don't mind--now," she said.

"I knew it!" thought Mary. "They're engaged..." And though she tried to
smile at them both, for some reason which I can never hope to explain, it