ch I had been taught, and still
believed, my heart to be, I felt rather than heard a distinct burbling.

I went to the telephone and fixed up an appointment with a specialist.

"It's only a murmur now," I said when I reached the consulting-room,
"only a mere whisper, but----"

The doctor tapped me vigorously. Being very absent-minded I said, "Come
in," the first time.

"You were rejected for this, I suppose?" he said.

"No, cow-hocked or spavined, I forget which," I said. "This hadn't
started then."

The rite was quite a lengthy one, and at the conclusion the heartsmith
said, "M--yes, there is a slight murmuring, certainly."

He wrote me out a prescription, and I felt the murmur myself distinctly
when parting with three of the greater Bradburys and three shillings.

On the way home I ran into Beatrice.

"Well, old thing," she said, "what's the matter? I saw you coming out of
Dr. Cox's."

"Yes," I said. "I've got a heart murmur. I don't know what the poor
things been trying to say, but it's been murmuring like anything all the
morning."

"Perhaps you're in love," she suggested.

"By Jove, I never thought of that. I wonder," I said, "if it's anything
to do with you. If this were not such a public place you might like to
put your head against my top left-hand waistcoat pocket and listen.
Perhaps it's saying something about you."

"Have you taken to writing poetry about me?" she said. "That's always a
sign."

"Now I come to think of it," I said, "I did feel a bit broody the other
day, and hatched a line or two, but I can't say for certain that I had
you in my mind. The lines ran like this:--

"Oh, glorious female, like a goddess decked,
No wonder that we crawl on bended knee--"

"Rotten," said Beatrice. "You couldn't have been thinking of me. I'm not
a female."

"You have the right plumage for the hen-bird," I said. "However, what
did me was 'decked.' I could only think of three rhymes, 'wrecked,'
'flecked' and 'stiff-necked.' You're not any of those by any chance?"

"There's 'circumspect', suggested Beatrice.

"Ah! Come and have lunch," I said, "and we'll talk it over. Some place
where I can hold your hand and really find out if you are the cause of
it all."

"Do you think I ought to?" she said.

"Good heavens! Of course you ought," I said. "It's most important. My
heart's only murmuring now, but it may start shouting soon, and a silly
ass I shall look walking about in the street with a hear