gramophone, to keep you amused in the evenings." She shuddered.
"No," she said with decision, "give me a regular old rattle-box
without a chin, like you, Tommy."

Mechanically Thompson's hand sought his chin, and Gladys laughed.

"Anyway, I'm not going to marry, in spite of the tube
furniture-posters. Uncle Jake says it's all nonsense to talk about
marriages being made in heaven; they're made in the Tottenham Court
Road."

Thompson had, however, returned to his plate. In her present mood,
Gladys Norman was beyond him. Realising the state of his mind, she
continued:

"He's got a head like a pierrot's cap and it's as bald as a
fivepenny egg, when it ought to be beautifully rounded and covered
with crisp curly hair. He wears glasses in front of eyes like bits
of slate, when they ought to be full of slumbrous passion. His jaw
is all right, only he doesn't use it enough; in books the strong,
silent man is a regular old chin-wag, and yet I fall over myself to
answer his buzzer. Why it is, I repeat?" She looked across at him
mischievously, enjoying the state of depression to which she had
reduced him.

Thompson merely shook his head.

"For all that," she continued, picking up her own knife and fork,
which in the excitement of describing Malcolm Sage she had laid down,
"for all that he would make a wonderful lover--once you could get
him started," and she laughed gleefully as if at some hidden joke.

Thompson gazed at her over a fork piled with food, which her remark
had arrested half-way to his mouth.

"He's chivalrous," she continued. "Look at the way he always tries
to help up the very people he has downed. It's just a game with
him----"

"No, it's not," burst out Thompson, through a mouthful of chicken
and saute potato.

She gave him a look of disapproval that caused him to swallow
rapidly.

"The Chief doesn't look on it as a game," he persisted. "He's out to
stop crime and----"

"But that's not the point," she interrupted. "What I want to know is
why do I bounce off my chair like an india-rubber ball when he
buzzes?" she demanded relentlessly. "Why do I want to please him?
Why do I want to kick myself when I make mistakes? Why--Oh! Tommy,"
she broke off, "if you only had a brain as well as a stomach," and
she looked across at him reproachfully.

"Perhaps it's because he never complains," suggested Thompson, as he
placed his knife and fork at the "all clear" angle, and leaned back
in his chair with a s