Paul stood on the hearthrug with bent brows, his hands in his jacket pockets.

"I can't understand it," he said.
"She must ha' come straight from the Town Hall," said Barney Bill.
"But she wasn't there," cried Paul.
"Sonny," said the old fellow, "if you're always dead sure of where a woman is and where a woman isn't, you're a wiser man than Solomon with all his wives and other domestic afflictions." Paul threw the card into the fire.

"It doesn't matter where she was," said he.

"It was a very polite--even a gracious act to send in her card on her way home.

But it makes no difference to what I was talking about.