colossal idea?"

He looked questioningly into three embarrassed faces. Emmy, in spite of her
own preoccupation, suppressed a giggle. There was a moment's silence, which
was broken by Septimus's mild voice:

"I think, by means of levers running down to the line and worked by the
trains as they passed, I could invent a machine for throwing little boxes
of samples from the board into the railway carriage windows."

Emmy burst out laughing. "Come and show me how you would do it."

She linked her arm in his and dragged him down to the line, where she spoke
with mirthful disrespect of Sypher's Cure. Meanwhile Zora said nothing to
Sypher.

"Don't you like it?" he asked at last, disconcerted.

"Do you want me to be the polite lady you've asked to lunch or your
friend?"

"My friend and my helper," said he.

"Then," she replied, touching his coat sleeve, "I must say that I don't
like it. I hate it. I think it's everything that is most abominable."

The board was one pride of his heart, and Zora was another. He looked at
them both alternately in a piteous, crestfallen way.

"But why?" he asked.