'Gad, you wouldn't catch Saunders sticking his nose in where he wasn't wanted.

He's--" "I was under the impression that you wanted him," interrupted Britt, most good-naturedly, his stubby legs far apart, his hands in his pockets.
"I say, Browne, would you mind coming into my room?
I want to hear that story, but I'm hanged if I'll listen to it out here." The oft-told story of the bishop and the bell, of course, has no bearing upon the affairs of Miss Pelham and Thomas Saunders.

And, for that matter, the small affairs of that worthy couple have little or no bearing upon the chief issue involved in this tale.

Nobody cares a rap whether Saunders, middle-aged and unheroic bachelor, with his precise little "burnsides," won the heart of the pert Miss Pelham, precise in character if not always so in type.

It is of no serious consequence that she kept him from calling her Minnie until the psychological moment, and it really doesn't matter that Thomas was days in advancing to the moment.