listen for sounds of an
aroused household, but the inmates of the White Horse Inn were still
taking life easily.

"Eliza vows she can hear that alarm in her room," he communed. "Well,
suppose we assist nature, always a laudable thing in itself, and
peculiarly excellent when breakfast is thereby advanced a quarter of
an hour."

Eliza was the inn's stout and voluble cook-housekeeper, and her attic
lay directly above Trenholme's room. He went back for the clock, crept
swiftly upstairs, opened a door a few inches, and put the infernal
machine inside, close to the wall. He was splashing in the bath when a
harsh and penetrating din jarred through the house, and a slight
scream showed that Eliza had been duly "alarmed."

A few minutes later came a heavy thump on the bathroom door.

"All right, Mr. Trenholme!" cried an irate female voice. "You've been
up to your tricks, have you? It'll be my turn when I make your coffee;
I'll pepper an' salt it!"

"Why, what's the matter, Eliza?" he shouted.

"Matter! Frightenin' a body like that! I thought a lot o' suffrigettes
were smashin' the windows of the snug."

Eliza was still touchy when Trenholme ventured to peep into the
kitchen.

"I don't know how you dare show your face," she cried wrathfully. "The
impidence of men nowadays! Just fancy you comin' an' openin' my door!"

"But, _cherie_, what have I done?" he inquired, his brown eyes wide
with astonishment.

"I'm not your cherry, nor your peach, neither. Who put that clock in
my room?"

"What clock, _ma belle_?"

Eliza picked up an egg, and bent so fiery a glance on the intruder
that he dodged out of sight for a second.

"Listen, _carissima_," he pleaded, peering round the jamb of the door
again. "If the alarm found its way upstairs I must have been walking
in my sleep. While you were dreaming of suffragettes I may have been
dreaming of you."

"Stop there a bit longer, chatterin' and callin' me names, an' your
bacon will be frizzled to a cinder," she retorted.

"But I really hoped to save you some trouble by carrying in the
breakfast tray myself. I hate to see a jolly, good-tempered woman of
your splendid physique working yourself to a shadow."

* * * * *

Eliza squared her elbows as a preliminary to another outburst, when
the stairs creaked. Mary, the "help," was arriving hurriedly, in curl
papers.

"Oh, _you_'ve condescended to get up, have you?" was the greeting Mary
receive