My eye met Edward’s.  We walked out into the hall.

“We’ll have to give Angela something or she’ll tidy us,” he groaned.

“These orderly people are a curse,” I protested.  “They have no consideration for others.  Look at me; I am naturally disorderly, but I don’t run round and untidy people’s houses for them.”

Edward nodded.  “I know; I know it’s all wrong, of course; we should make a stand.  Still, if we can buy Angela off, I think ... you understand?...”  And he ambled off to his muck-room.

If anybody in this neighbourhood has anything that is both an eyesore and an encumbrance they bestow it on Edward for his muck-room, where he stores it against an impossible contingency.  I trotted upstairs to my bedroom and routed about among my Lares et Penates.  I have many articles which, though of no intrinsic value, are bound to me by strong ties of sentiment; little old bits of things—­you know how it is.  After twenty minutes’ heart-and-drawer-searching I decided to sacrifice a policeman’s helmet and a sock, the upper of which had outlasted the toe and heel.  I bore these downstairs and laid them at Aunt Angela’s feet.

“What’s this?” said she, stirring the helmet disdainfully with her toe.

“Relic of the Great War.  The Crown Prince used to wear it in wet weather to keep the crown dry.”

Aunt Angela sniffed and picked up the sock with the fire-tongs.  “And this?”

“A sock, of course,” I explained.  “An emergency sock of my own invention.  It has three exits, you will observe, very handy in case of fire.”

“Hump!” said Aunt Angela.

Edward returned bearing his offerings, a gent’s rimless boater, a doorknob, six inches of lead-piping and half a bottle of cod-liver oil.

“Hump!” said Aunt Angela.

No more was said of it that night.  Aunt Angela resumed her sewing, Edward his Gertie, I my slumb—­, my meditations.  Nor indeed was the jumble sale again mentioned, a fact which in itself should have aroused my suspicions; but I am like that, innocent as a sucking-dove.  I had put the matter out of my mind altogether until yesterday evening, when, hearing the sound of laboured breathing and the frantic clanking of a bicycle pump proceeding from the shed, I went thither to investigate, and was nearly capsized by Edward charging out.

“It’s gone,” he cried—­“gone!” and pawed wildly for his stirrup.

“What has?” I inquired.

“‘The Limit,’” he wailed.  “She’s picked ... lock ... muck-room with a hairpin, sent ...  Limit ... jumble sale!”

He sprang aboard his cycle and disappeared down the high road to St. Gwithian, pedalling like a squirrel on a treadmill, the tails of his new mackintosh spread like wings on the breeze.  So Aunt Angela with serpentine guile had deferred her raid until the last moment and then bagged “The Limit,” the pride of the muck-room.