ombination hardly to be forgiven.

Condy shook her hand in both of his, then rushed over to Mr. Bessemer,
exclaiming between breaths: "Don't get up, sir--don't THINK of it!
Heavens! I'm disgustingly late. You're all through. My watch--this
beastly watch of mine--I can't imagine how I came to be so late. You
did quite right not to wait."

Then as his morbidly keen observation caught a certain look of
blankness on Travis' face, and his rapid glance noted no vacant chair
at table, he gave a quick gasp of dismay.

"Heavens and earth! didn't you EXPECT me?" he cried. "I thought you
said--I thought--I must have forgotten--I must have got it mixed up
somehow. What a hideous mistake, what a blunder! What a fool I am!"

He dropped into a chair against the wall and mopped his forehead with a
blue-bordered handkerchief.

"Well, what difference does it make, Condy?" said Travis quietly.
"I'll put another place for you."

"No, no!" he vociferated, jumping up. "I won't hear of it, I won't
permit it! You'll think I did it on purpose!"

Travis ignored his interference, and made a place for him opposite the
children, and had Maggie make some more chocolate.

Condy meanwhile covered himself with opprobrium.

"And all this trouble--I always make trouble everywhere I go. Always a
round man in a square hole, or a square man in a round hole."

He got up and sat down again, crossed and recrossed his legs, picked up
little ornaments from the mantelpiece, and replaced them without
consciousness of what they were, and finally broke the crystal of his
watch as he was resetting it by the cuckoo clock.

"Hello!" he exclaimed suddenly, "where did you get that clock? Where
did you get that clock? That's new to me. Where did that come from?"

"That cuckoo clock?" inquired Travis, with a stare. "Condy Rivers,
you've been here and in this room at least twice a week for the last
year and a half, and that clock, and no other, has always hung there."

But already Condy had forgotten or lost interest in the clock.

"Is that so? is that so?" he murmured absent-mindedly, seating himself
at the table.

Mr. Bessemer was murmuring: "That clock's a little fast. I can not
make that clock keep time. Victorine has lost the key. I have to wind
it with a monkey-wrench. Now I'll try some more beans. Maggie has put
in too much pepper. I'll have to have a new key made to-morrow."

"Hey? Yes--yes. Is that so?" answered Condy Rivers, bewi