"How will you remember the quantity?".

"Well, fourteen pounds make one stone, don't they? Before I remember the
hard thing is a piece of sugar I shall think it's a stone."

Joan sniffed contemptuously.

"Then there's my ring," she continued, "the diamond and sapphire one
that I left for resetting. The estimate they promised has not come, and
besides there's the----"

"Hold on a minute!" I cried. "Just tie a piece of cotton round my
married finger."

She did so. Then she went on:

"The drawing-room clock should have been sent home, cleaned, last
Friday. They haven't sent it."

"Perhaps they expected it to _run down_," I suggested.

Joan bore up wonderfully, and merely said, "Well--do something. Put the
sardines in your pocket-book, or the marmalade in your gloves."

"Those," I said, "are not, strictly speaking, mnemonics for sending home
cleaned clocks. They would be all right for a picnic tea-basket, but not
for the thing in question. Everything I have done up to the present is
suggestive of what I have to remember," and I turned my watch round in
my pocket so that it faced outwards.

"I see," said Joan. "Now, what's the cotton round your finger for?"

"Smoked sa--, that is to say, coff--, I mean the estimate for your
ring," I answered. "Is there anything else?"

"Another box of stationery like the last--the crinkly paper, you know.
They've got our die."

I tore a strip from the newspaper, crinkled it carefully and put it away
in my cigarette-case. A minute later I was on my way to the
railway-station.

A keen head-wind was blowing, causing my eyes to water and the tears to
flow unbidden. I explored my sleeve for my handkerchief. It was not
there. I could not possibly go to town without one, so I hastened home
again. Joan was at the window as I ran up.

"What is it?" she cried.

"My handkerchief!" I gasped. "I've forgotten----"

"Fourteen pounds of best loaf sugar!" called out Joan. "It's in your
hat."

As I hurried once more in the direction of the station I withdrew the
handkerchief from my hat and wiped my streaming eyes. The operation
over, I placed the handkerchief in my sleeve. I heard the whistle of a
train in the distance and instinctively took out my watch. It was
right-about-face in my pocket, and I lost a good half-second in getting
it into the correct position for time-telling. It was nine-seventeen. I
had just one minute in which to do the quarter-mile; but my _forte_ is
the egg