girls bar golf, and then it's rather difficult to know how to start
conversation. But, tell me, were there any topics which got on Miss
Bennett's nerves, if you know what I mean? It seems to me that at one
time or another you may have said something that offended her. I mean,
it seems curious that she should have broken off the engagement if
you had never disagreed or quarrelled about anything."

"Well, of course, there was always the matter of that dog of hers. She
had a dog, you know, a snappy brute of a Pekingese. If there was ever
any shadow of disagreement between us, it had to do with that dog. I
made rather a point of it that I would not have it about the home after
we were married."

"I see!" said Sam. He shot his cuff once more and wrote on it:
"Dog-conciliate."

"Yes, of course, that must have wounded her."

"Not half so much as he wounded me! He pinned me by the ankle the day
before we--Wilhelmina and I, I mean--were to have been married. It is
some satisfaction to me in my broken state to remember that I got home
on the little beast with considerable juiciness and lifted him clean
over the Chesterfield."

Sam shook his head reprovingly.

"You shouldn't have done that!" he said. He extended his cuff and added
the words "Vitally important" to what he had just written. "It was
probably that which decided her."