f its present
bulk, because it lacked our new nobility and gave no heed to your
favourite recreation. D.V. Williams stood in the yellow light of the
west window, reading a letter... "Cousin? No! Twin brother,
perhaps; but had she one?..." mused Bertie... and then, that
never-to-be-forgotten voice ... "Here's 'Oo's Oo--er--Hoo's Hoo, I
mean.... Miss..." He only added the last word as by some
sub-conscious instinct.

"_Mister_ Williams," said Vivien-David-Warren Williams, facing him
with resolute eyes. "Be quite clear about that, Adams; _David
Vavasour Williams_, Miss Warren's cousin."

"Indeed I will be, Miss ... Mister ... er ... Sir..." said the
transfigured Bertie (his brain voice saying over and over again in
ecstasy ... "_I_ tumble to it! _I_ tumble to it!"). And then again
"_Indeed_ I will, Mr. Williams. I'm a bit stupidlike this evenin'
... readin' too much.... May I stay and help you, Sir? I'm pretty
quick on the typewriter, Miss Warren may have told you ... Sir ...
and I ain't--I mean--_I am not_--half bad with me shorthand.... You
know--I mean, _she_ would know I'd joined them evenin' classes..."

"Thank you, Adams; but if you have joined the evening classes you
oughtn't to interrupt your attendance there. I can _quite_ manage
here alone and you need not be afraid: I shall leave everything
properly closed. You could give up the key of the outer office as
you go out. You may often find me at work here after office hours,
but that need not disturb you ... and I need hardly say, after all
Miss Fraser and Miss Warren have told me about you, I rely on you to
be at all times thoroughly discreet and not likely to discuss the
work of this firm or my share in it with any one?"...

"Indeed you may ... Mr. Williams ... indeed you may.... Oh! I'm so
happy.... Good-night ... Sir!"

And Adams's heart was too full for attendance at a lecture on Roman
law. He went off instead to the play. He himself belonged now to the
world of romance. He knew of things--and wild horses and red-hot
tweezers should not tear the knowledge from him, or make him
formulate his deductions--he knew of things as amazing, as prodigal
of developments as anything in the problem play enacted beyond the
pit and the stalls; he was the younger brother of Herbert Waring and
the comrade of Jessie Joseph: at that moment deceiving the sleuth
hounds of Stage law by parading in her fiance's evening dress and
going to prison for his sake.

Beryl Claridge