orny hands
had filled up the voting-papers and my own smelt to heaven of fish.
It was a quarter to five, and dark, before I escaped from the attentions
of a small but pertinacious group of inquirers who wanted to understand
my exact attitude on the question of trawling within the three-mile
limit, and proceeded at a hand-gallop back to Stoneleigh. (That
odoriferous but popular vehicle, the motor-car, was still in the
preceded-by-a-man-ten-yards-in-front-bearing-a-red-flag stage in those
days, and we had to rely on that antiquated but much more reliable
medium of transport, the horse.) The snow lay very heavily in places,
and our progress was not over-rapid. Moreover, passing the central
Committee Rooms on my way to the hotel, I was stopped and haled within
to conciliate various wobblers, and another twenty minutes of precious
time sped. But I stuck to my determination to let nothing interfere with
duty that day, and I argued with free-thinkers and pump-handled bemused
supporters until all was settled and Cash said I might go.

Still, it was nearer six than five when my panting horses drew up at the
Cathedral Arms.

There was no Dolly to receive me this time, but at the top of the stairs
leading to our rooms I met the doctor. He was accompanied by a
grey-haired, kind-eyed old gentleman in a frock-coat, with "London
Specialist" written all over him. It was Sir James Fordyce.

"Well?" I asked feverishly as I shook hands.

The two men motioned me into the sitting-room, and Farquharson said, in
a curiously uncertain fashion--

"Mr Inglethwaite, we have done a thing which should not, properly, have
been done without your consent. Your secretary suggested the idea, and I
agreed. Mrs Inglethwaite made a point of our saying nothing to you, and
volunteered to take all responsibility on herself. She said you were not
to be worried. So I wired for Sir James----"

"I see," I said, "and he operated?"

"Yes, at three o'clock this afternoon. Indeed, your sister-in-law, I
think, purposely concealed from you----"

"She did." That, then, was the "crisis" that Dolly had in her mind, and
that, too, was why she had told me to come back at five--when everything
would be well over!

I continued--

"And how have you--I mean--is she----?"

"The operation," said the old man, "was entirely successful, and, as it
turned out, most necessary. But of course for so young a patient the
strain was terrible."

"How is she?"

"She came th