don’t quite know how he meant that. But never mind, Mr. Cut-and-Dried. I have altered your time-table by a day, at least!)

“To-morrow, then,” said Mr. Waters, after I had said “Is that all?” And I went.

The next day was a regular “new-hat” day. Just the sort of day to go out to lunch with a “hovering” fiancé—a real one!—I thought, as I set off down the Embankment, leaving Cicely, whose foot isn’t quite right even yet, at the open sitting-room window with a novel.

It was brightly sunny, but, although we’re nearly in June now, there was a nip of cold in the breeze; the smile of a flirt—of a “cold coquette,” as Major Montresor described me once. I wonder what he’d think if ever he met me again? Probably that it was just like little[42] Monica to “pull off” making a good match with another froggy-natured person.

[42]

I laughed at this as I was walking along to the corner where I get the motor-bus. After all, there’s nothing to do but laugh at it—at the whole affair. Actually, it was a momentous choice to have thrust upon any girl; and it might have cruelly embarrassing side-issues. But what’s the good of dwelling on momentous and cruel aspects of subjects that have a comic side to them? The only way is to look hard at that comic side—to see the joke, the whole joke, and, most important of all, nothing but the joke.

I felt satisfactorily strung up to the coming “fun” of the situation when I got into the typists’ dressing-room at the Near Oriental.

Here I found Miss Holt listening to Miss Smith, evidently a little headachy and nervous, attempting to “stand up” to Miss Robinson in some argument.

“The matter with you,” she was saying pettishly, “is that you’re setting up to be a man-hater!”

“Setting up? No such luck,” said Miss Robinson, maddeningly good-tempered. “If I could ever see a fellow I didn’t think was awful, I’d begin thinking of setting up. But where are all the men, good gracious? What does a girl ever see, working in holes of offices?[43] Weeds! Indoor weeds, smelling of stale Virginians and wearing Number Thirteen collars.”

[43]

“Collars aren’t anything!” Miss Smith flushed an angry pink.

“No; but what they go round are. And I must say I like to see a chap with a good, thick, strong-looking one (that’s why all the nice 

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