"What had she to do with it?" I asked.

"Oh, just being there--being his sister--being an invalid, yon
know."

"No, I don't know, at all."

"The trouble is, I'm telling you the end of the story first."

"Let's start at the very beginning."

"In real life beginnings and middles and ends of things are all
so jumbled up."

"When I went away," I said, "everybody thought it was Harry
Clayton, with the Englishman as a strong second, and there wasn't
any Malcolm about it."

"Do yon remember the flurry in Great Westerns?" she asked.

"That's surely the beginning of something else," I remarked,

"No, it's the beginning of this."

I've a faint memory they jumped up to something tremendous,
didn't they?"

"It was the biggest thing of its kind ever seen on Wall Street."