(Mr Loggerheads was cashier of the Bursley branch of the Birmingham and Sheffield Bank.)

“Who told you?” asked Mary Morfe, curtly.

Richard Morfe said nothing.  The machinations of the manager of the Hanbridge Choir always depressed and disgusted him into silence.

“Oh!” said Eva Harracles.  “It’s all about.” (By which she meant that it was in the air.) “Everyone’s talking of it.”

“And do they say Mr Loggerheads has accepted?” Mary demanded.

“Yes,” said Eva.

“Well,” said Mary, “it’s not true!...  A mistake!” she added.

“How do you know it isn’t true?” Mr Morfe inquired doubtfully.

“Since you’re so curious,” said Mary, defiantly, “Mr Loggerheads told me himself.”

“When?”

“The other day.”

“You never said anything to me,” protested Mr Morfe.

“It didn’t occur to me,” Mary replied.

“Well, I’m very glad!” remarked Eva Harracles.  “But I thought I ought to let you know at once what was being said.”

Mary Morfe’s expression conveyed the fact that in her opinion Eva Harracles’ evening call was a vain thing, too lightly undertaken, and conceivably lacking in the nicest discretion.  Whereupon Mr Morfe was evidently struck by the advisability of completely changing the subject.  And he did change it.  He began to talk about certain difficulties in the choral parts of Havergal Brian’s Vision of Cleopatra, a work which he meant the Bursley Glee and Madrigal Club to perform though it should perish in the attempt.  Growing excited, in his dry way, concerning the merits of this composition, he rose from his easy chair and went to search for it.  Before doing so he looked at the clock, which indicated twenty minutes past nine.

“Am I all right for time?” asked Eva.

“Yes, you’re all right,” said he.  “If you go when that clock strikes half-past, and take the next car down, you’ll make the connection easily at Turnhill.  I’ll put you into the car.”

“Oh, thanks!” said Eva.

Mr Morfe kept his modern choral music beneath a broad seat under the bow window.  The music was concealed by a low curtain that ran on a rod—­the ingenious device of Mary.  He stooped down to find the Vision of Cleopatra, and at first he could not find it.  Mary walked towards that end of the drawing-room with a vague notion of helping him, and then Eva did the same, and then Mary walked back, and then Mr Morfe happily put his hand on the Vision of Cleopatra.

He opened the score for Eva’s inspection, and began to hum passages and to point out others, and Eva also began to hum, and they hummed in concert, at intervals exclaiming against the wantonness with which Havergal Brian had invented difficulties.  Eva glanced at the clock.

“You’re all right,” Mr Morfe assured her somewhat impatiently.  And he, too, glanced at the clock:  “You’ve still nearly ten minutes.”