The Clicking of Cuthbert

a pocket-knife with everything in it broken except the corkscrew

and the thing for taking stones out of horses' hoofs. It was like

this----"

I could bear no more. I am a tender-hearted man, and I made some excuse

and got away. From the expression on the girl's face I could see that

it was only a question of days before she gave her heart to this

romantic newcomer.

       *       *       *       *       *

As a matter of fact, it was on the following afternoon that she called

on me and told me that the worst had happened. I had known her from a

child, you understand, and she always confided her troubles to me.

"I want your advice," she began. "I'm so wretched!"

She burst into tears. I could see the poor girl was in a highly nervous

condition, so I did my best to calm her by describing how I had once

done the long hole in four. My friends tell me that there is no finer

soporific, and it seemed as though they may be right, for presently,

just as I had reached the point where I laid my approach-putt dead from

a distance of fifteen feet, she became quieter. She dried her eyes,

yawned once or twice, and looked at me bravely.

"I love Eddie Denton!" she said.

"I feared as much. When did you feel this coming on?"

"It crashed on me like a thunderbolt last night after dinner. We were

walking in the garden, and he was just telling me how he had been

bitten by a poisonous zongo, when I seemed to go all giddy. When

I came to myself I was in Eddie's arms. His face was pressed against

mine, and he was gargling."

"Gargling?"

"I thought so at first. But he reassured me. He was merely speaking in

one of the lesser-known dialects of the Walla-Walla natives of Eastern

Uganda, into which he always drops in moments of great emotion. He soon

recovered sufficiently to give me a rough translation, and then I knew

that he loved me. He kissed me. I kissed him. We kissed each other."

"And where was Mortimer all this while?"

"Indoors, cataloguing his collection of vases."

For a moment, I confess, I was inclined to abandon Mortimer's cause. A

man, I felt, who could stay indoors cataloguing vases while his

fiancee wandered in the moonlight with explorers deserved all

that was coming to him. I overcame the feeling.

"Have you told him?"

"Of course not."

"You don't think it might be of interest to him?"

"How can I tell him? It would break his heart. I am awfully fond of

Mortimer. So is Eddie. We would both die rather than do anything to

hurt him. Eddie is the soul of honour. He agrees with me that Mortimer

must never know."

"Then you aren't going to break off your engagement?"

"I couldn't. Eddie feels the same. He says that, unless something can

be done, he will say good-bye to me and creep far, far away to some

distant desert, and there, in the great stillness, broken only by the

cry of the prowling yongo, try to forget."

"When you say 'unless something can be done,' what do you mean? What

can be done?"

"I thought you might have something to suggest. Don't you think it

possible that somehow Mortimer might take it into his head to break the

engagement himself?"

"Absurd! He loves you devotedly."

"I'm afraid so. Only the other day I dropped one of his best vases, and

he just smiled and said it didn't matter."

"I can give you even better proof than that. This morning Mortimer came

to me and asked me to give him secret lessons in golf."

"Golf! But he despises golf."

"Exactly. But he is going to learn it for your sake."

"But why secret lessons?"

"Because he wants to keep it a surprise for your birthday. Now can you

doubt his love?"

"I am not worthy of him!" she whispered.

The words gave me an idea.

"Suppose," I said, "we could convince Mortimer of that!"

"I don't understand."

"Suppose, for instance, he could be made to believe that you were, let

us say, a dipsomaniac."

She shook her head. "He knows that already."

"What!"

"Yes; I told him I sometimes walked in my sleep."

"I mean a secret drinker."

"Nothing will induce me to pretend to be a secret drinker."

"Then a drug-fiend?" I suggested, hopefully.

"I hate medicine."

"I have it!" I said. "A kleptomaniac."

"What is that?"

"A person who steals things."

"Oh, that's horrid."

"Not at all. It's a perfectly ladylike thing to do. You don't know you

do it."

"But, if I don't know I do it, how do I know I do it?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean, how can I tell Mortimer I do it if I don't know?"

"You don't tell him. I will tell him. I will inform him tomorrow that

you called on me this afternoon and stole my watch and"--I glanced

about the room--"my silver matchbox."

"I'd rather have that little vinaigrette."

"You don't get either. I merely say you stole it. What will happen?"

"Mortimer will hit you with a cleek."

"Not at all. I am an old man. My white hairs protect me. What he will

do is to insist on confronting me with you and asking you to deny the

foul charge."

"And then?"

"Then you admit it and release him from his engagement."

She sat for a while in silence. I could see that my words had made an

impression.

"I think it's a splendid idea. Thank you very much." She rose and moved