“I don’t know what you mean,” I
quavered. “Give me that watch to return
to Mr. Harbison.”
“Not on your life,” he retorted easily.
“I give it back myself, like I did the bracelet,
and—like I’m going to give back the
necklace, if you’ll act like a sensible little
girl.”
I could only choke.
“It’s foolish, any way you look at it,”
he persisted. “Here you are, lots of friends,
folks that think you’re all right. Why,
I reckon there isn’t one of them that wouldn’t
lend you money if you needed it so bad.”
“Will you be still?” I said furiously.
“Mr. Harbison left that watch—with
me—an hour ago. Get him, and he will
tell you so himself!”
“Of course he would,” Flannigan conceded,
looking at me with grudging approval. “He
wouldn’t be what I think he is, if he didn’t
lie up and down for you.” There were voices
in the hall. Flannigan came closer. “An
hour ago, you say. And he told me it was gone
this morning! It’s a losing game, miss.
I’ll give you twenty-four hours and then—the
necklace, if you please, miss.”
The clash that came that evening had been threatening
for some time. Take an immovable body, represented
by Mr. Harbison and his square jaw, and an irresistible
force, Jimmy and his weight, and there is bound to
be trouble.
The real fault was Jim’s. He had gone entirely
mad again over Bella, and thrown prudence to the winds.
He mooned at her across the dinner table, and waylaid
her on the stairs or in the back halls, just to hear
her voice when she ordered him out of her way.
He telephoned for flowers and candy for her quite
shamelessly, and he got out a book of photographs that
they had taken on their wedding journey, and kept
it on the library table. The sole concession
he made to our presumptive relationship was to bring
me the responsibility for everything that went wrong,
and his shirts for buttons.
The first I heard of the trouble was from Dal.
He waylaid me in the hall after dinner that night,
and his face was serious.
“I’m afraid we can’t keep it up
very long, Kit,” he said. “With Jim
trailing Bella all over the house, and the old lady
keener every day, it’s bound to come out somehow.
And that isn’t all. Jim and Harbison had
a set-to today—about you.”
“About me!” I repeated. “Oh,
I dare say I have been falling short again. What
was Jim doing? Abusing me?”
Dal looked cautiously over his shoulder, but no one
was near.
“It seems that the gentle Bella has been unusually
beastly today to Jim, and—I believe she’s
jealous of you, Kit. Jim followed her up to the
roof before dinner with a box of flowers, and she
tossed them over the parapet. She said, I believe,
that she didn’t want his flowers; he could buy
them for you, and be damned to him, or some lady-like
equivalent.”
“Jim is a jellyfish,” I said contemptuously.
“What did he say?”
