“There you are!” breathed Mrs. Poskett. “There’s a brazen hussy to deal with! She’s going out to meet him!”

“You follow ’er the moment she leaves,” Mr. Poskett directed Mr. Clark. “And don’t let ’er out of your sight.”

Miss Nancy, returning soon after, in smart outdoor toilet, shook Mr. Clark’s hand and bade him a quite disinterested farewell. A few moments later the front door closed behind her with a definite snap, and, a few moments later still, Mr. Clark was in the street, intent on following her.

She was already some score of yards away, but none the less an encouraging remark offered by her uncle from the doorstep to Mr. Clark on the pavement caught her ear. She glanced back, and then went on her way at slightly accelerated speed.

Thrice did the girl turn unexpected corners, and p. 39thrice did the portly Mr. Clark have to break into a clumsy trot before he brought her in view again. And then she continued unremittingly to the very end of a particularly long thoroughfare, and faithfully did the panting Mr. Clark tag along in her wake on the opposite side of the road.

p. 39

Presently, Nancy came to a corner at the end of the thoroughfare, and here she stopped, gazing expectantly this way and that. Mr. Clark with a nimbleness surprising in one of his build, skipped into the doorway of a shop. The girl, suddenly resuming her course, passed swiftly round the corner out of sight. With a feeling that the climax of the chase was at hand, Mr. Clark darted from his lair and ambled after her. Breathlessly he rounded the corner, and here he narrowly averted collision with Miss Poskett, who was standing quite still beneath a street lamp.

“Er—er—good evening, miss!” stammered Mr. Clark. “I—I thought it might be you! ’Ow—’ow do you do?”

“You’ve been following me!” she scornfully charged him.

“Oh, no!” he declared. “Just a—a cohincidence! I—I simply ’appened to be coming this way, and—and—”

“Fancy! And are you going along this road here on the right, too?”

“I am, miss.”

“Well, I’m not!”

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