"No!"  said Mr. Cooper, loudly and suddenly. 

     "Do you remember coming to me one day—two days after Valentine Day, it was—white as chalk and shaking like a leaf, and—" 

     "NO!" roared Mr. Cooper. 

     "Very well, I must try something else, then," said Mr. Simpson, philosophically.  "Carry your mind back ten years, Bob Cooper—" 

     "Look here!"  said Mr. Cooper, turning round with a ghastly smile.  "We'd better get off home, Mary. I don't like interfering in other people's     concerns. Never did." 

     "You stay where you are," said his wife. 

     "Ten years," repeated the voice behind the door.  "There was a new barmaid at the Crown, and one night you——" 

     "If I listen to any more of this nonsense I shall burst," remarked Mr. Cooper, plaintively. 

     "Go on," prompted Mrs. Cooper, grimly.  "One night——" 

     "Never mind," said Mr. Simpson.  "It doesn't matter. But does he identify me? Because if not I've got a lot more things I can try." 

     The harassed Mr. Cooper looked around appealingly. 

     "How do you expect me to recognize you—" he began, and stopped suddenly. 

     "Go back to your courting days, then," said Mr. Simpson, "when Mrs. Cooper wasn't Mrs. Cooper, but only wanted to be." 

     Mrs. Cooper shivered; so did Mr. Cooper. 

     "And you came round to me for advice," pursued Mr. Simpson, in reminiscent accents, "because there was another girl you wasn't sure of, and you didn't want to lose them both. Do you remember sitting with the two photographs—one on each knee—and trying to make up your mind?" 

     "Wonderful imagination," said Mr. Cooper, smiling in a ghastly fashion at his wife.  "Hark at him!" 

     "I am harking," said Mrs. Cooper. 

     "Am I Bill Simpson or am I not?" demanded Mr. Simpson. 

    

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