she might never have heard anything about the marriage."

"Then how do you mean she stopped it?"

"She pinched my trousers!"

"Pinched your trousers?"

Eustace groaned. "All of them! The whole bally lot! She gets up long
before I do, and she must have come into my room and cleaned it out
while I was asleep. When I woke up and started to dress I couldn't find
a solitary pair of bags anywhere in the whole place. I looked
everywhere. Finally, I went into the sitting-room where she was writing
letters and asked if she had happened to see any anywhere. She said she
had sent them all to be pressed. She said she knew I never went out in
the mornings--I don't as a rule--and they would be back at lunch-time,
A fat lot of use that was! I had to be at the church at eleven. Well, I
told her I had a most important engagement with a man at eleven, and
she wanted to know what it was and I tried to think of something, but
it sounded pretty feeble and she said I had better telephone to the man
and put it off. I did it, too. Rang up the first number in the book and
told some fellow I had never seen in my life that I couldn't meet him!
He was pretty peeved, judging from what he said about my being on the
wrong line. And mother listening all the time, and I knowing that she
knew--something told me that she knew--and she knowing that I knew she
knew--I tell you it was awful!"

"And the girl?"

"She broke off the engagement. Apparently she waited at the church from