"You furnish the Girl, We furnish the House," screamed the bench to him above the name of an enterprising tradesman that came in time to bite itself deeply into his memory.
Of course it would be absurd, but stranger things, he thought, had happened.

He wondered if the girl was as afraid of him as of other men.
She seemed not to be, but you couldn't tell much about her.

She had kissed him one day with a strange warmth of manner, but it had been quite publicly in the presence of other people.

When he left her at her door now it was after the least sentimental of partings, perhaps a shake of her hard little hand, or perhaps only a "S'long--see you at the show-shop!" It was on one of these nights that she first invited him to dine with the Montague family.

"I tried last night to get you on the telephone," she explained, "but they kept giving me someone else, or maybe I called wrong.