mly by both hands--"I do hope you agree with me that the Roman
influence is most dangerous." And before he had time to reply--"Ah, but
I wish you had known Anthony when he was a little boy and wore sailor
suits--white on Sundays with a cord and a whistle round his neck. My
poor husband could not endure the whistle, so he took the pea out of it
and then it only made an airy noise instead of a blast."

"Mother dear," Anthony interposed, "aren't you going down to the village?"

A suggestion to which Harrison Smith proved a ready seconder.

"Don't let us detain you, Madam," he beseeched.

"No, I won't, I won't. Besides, I mustn't be late. As Mr. Gladstone
said in '84--and oh, what a hot summer that was--he said--'Detention is
the mother of time.'"

At which Freddie Dirk, who knew something of both detention and time,
shivered uncomfortably and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Never be late," continued Mrs. Barraclough, rallying her resources for a
new oration, "although I was late once for a flower show at
Weston-super-Mare--or was it a funeral, Anthony? At any rate, there were
a lot of flowers there, so it may have been a wedding or a garden party.
But really, I mustn't stay a moment longer. I've got to see a Mrs.
Brassbound--poor dear, she's--Anthony, go away, you mustn't listen--I'm
going to treat you as friends--there's going to be a baby--she's the wife
of our village constable, you know--such a nice man--but as I've always
said, Policemen will be Policemen."

"Yes, yes, yes," said Harrison Smith, whose patience was running out,
"very interesting. I have a friend staying at the hotel. I wonder if I
might use your telephone."

Mrs. Barraclough caught the warning in Anthony's eyes as she gave her
consent. Also she caught a glint of light from the rose cutters that lay
on the sofa.

What more natural than for a hostess to be seated while her guest made
his call and what more fortunate than the fact that the telephone wire
passed over the arm of the sofa on its way to the insulator in the floor.
The snip of the scissors as she cut the wire was quite inaudible because
of the good lady's flow of remarks on the subject of telephony.

"They may keep you waiting," she said and kept on chattering until
Harrison Smith hung up the receiver in despair of being connected with
his ally Bolt.

"And now, Madam, I feel sure we have kept you much too long," he said.

"You'd better be off, Mother," sai