felt it necessary to
explain about the injured hand and the Tell-el-Amarna tablets; which I
accordingly did rather shyly and with a nervous eye upon Jervis. The
slow grin, however, for which I was watching, never came; on the
contrary, he not only heard me through quite gravely, but when I had
finished said with some warmth, and using my old hospital pet name:

"I'll say one thing for you, Polly; you're a good chum, and you always
were. I hope your Nevill's Court friends appreciate the fact."

"They are far more appreciative than the occasion warrants," I
answered. "But to return to this question: how will this day week suit
you?"

"It will suit me," Thorndyke answered, with a glance at his junior.

"And me too," said the latter; "so, if it will do for the Bellinghams,
we will consider it settled; but if they can't come, you must fix
another night."

"Very well," I said, rising and knocking out my pipe. "I will issue
the invitation to-morrow. And now I must be off to have another slog
at those notes."

As I walked homeward I speculated cheerfully on the prospect of
entertaining my friends under my own (or rather Barnard's) roof, if
they could be lured out of their eremitical retirement. The idea had,
in fact, occurred to me already, but I had been deterred by the
peculiarities of Barnard's housekeeper. For Mrs. Gummer was one of
those housewives who make up for an archaic simplicity of production by
preparations on the most portentous and alarming scale. But this time
I would not be deterred. If only the guests could be enticed into my
humble lair it would be easy to furnish the raw materials of the feast
from outside; and the consideration of ways and means occupied me
pleasantly until I found myself once more at my writing-table,
confronted by my voluminous notes on the incidents of the North Syrian
War.

CHAPTER VIII

A MUSEUM IDYLL

Whether it was that practise revived a forgotten skill on my part, or
that Miss Bellingham had over-estimated the amount of work to be done,
I am unable to say. But whichever may have been the explanation, the
fact is that the fourth afternoon saw our task so nearly completed that
I was fain to plead that a small remainder might be left over to form
an excuse for yet one more visit to the reading-room.

Short, however, as had been the period of our collaboration, it had
been long enough to produce a great change in our relations to one
another. For there is