"No more do I. That's the dreadful thing about it. You've got to
listen to chaps that you don't know. Why, coming home on my
bicycle the other day there was an awful row between some infernal
'sprocket' and the 'ball bearings' of the machine, and I never knew
before there were such things in the whole concern.

I thought I had got at his secret, and said carelessly: "Then I
suppose this was the reason why you broke off your engagement with
Miss Millikens?"

"Not at all," he said coolly. "Nothing to do with it. That is
quite another affair. It's a very queer story; would you like to
hear it?"

"By all means." I took out my notebook.

"You remember that night of the Amateur Theatricals, got up by the
White Hussars, when the lights suddenly went out all over the
house?"

"Yes," I replied, "I heard about it."

"Well, I had gone down there that evening with the determination of
proposing to Mary Millikens the first chance that offered. She sat
just in front of me, her sister Jane next, and her mother, smart
Widow Millikens,--who was a bit larky on her own account, you
remember,--the next on the bench. When the lights went out and the
panic and tittering began, I saw my chance! I leaned forward, and
in a voice that would just reach Mary's ear I said, 'I have long