"Exactly?" demanded the Girton Girl.

"Precisely," I replied.

"Strange," murmured the Girton Girl. "There is no accounting for
it, yet it always is so."

"What is there no accounting for?" I inquired. "What is strange?"

"It is a German superstition," explained the Girton Girl, "I learnt
it at school. Whenever complete silence falls upon any company, it
is always twenty minutes past the hour."

"Why do we talk so much?" demanded the Minor Poet.

"As a matter of fact," observed the Woman of the World, "I don't
think we do--not we, personally, not much. Most of our time we
appear to be listening to you."

"Then why do I talk so much, if you prefer to put it that way?"
continued the Minor Poet. "If I talked less, one of you others
would have to talk more."

"There would be that advantage about it," agreed the Philosopher.

"In all probability, you," returned to him the Minor Poet. "Whether
as a happy party we should gain or lose by the exchange, it is not
for me to say, though I have my own opinion. The essential remains-
-that the stream of chatter must be kept perpetually flowing. Why?"