“I don’t know what you mean,” I quavered.  “Give me that watch to return to Mr. Harbison.”

“Not on your life,” he retorted easily.  “I give it back myself, like I did the bracelet, and—­like I’m going to give back the necklace, if you’ll act like a sensible little girl.”

I could only choke.

“It’s foolish, any way you look at it,” he persisted.  “Here you are, lots of friends, folks that think you’re all right.  Why, I reckon there isn’t one of them that wouldn’t lend you money if you needed it so bad.”

“Will you be still?” I said furiously.  “Mr. Harbison left that watch—­with me—­an hour ago.  Get him, and he will tell you so himself!”

“Of course he would,” Flannigan conceded, looking at me with grudging approval.  “He wouldn’t be what I think he is, if he didn’t lie up and down for you.”  There were voices in the hall.  Flannigan came closer.  “An hour ago, you say.  And he told me it was gone this morning!  It’s a losing game, miss.  I’ll give you twenty-four hours and then—­the necklace, if you please, miss.”

Chapter XVII.  A CLASH AND A KISS

The clash that came that evening had been threatening for some time.  Take an immovable body, represented by Mr. Harbison and his square jaw, and an irresistible force, Jimmy and his weight, and there is bound to be trouble.

The real fault was Jim’s.  He had gone entirely mad again over Bella, and thrown prudence to the winds.  He mooned at her across the dinner table, and waylaid her on the stairs or in the back halls, just to hear her voice when she ordered him out of her way.  He telephoned for flowers and candy for her quite shamelessly, and he got out a book of photographs that they had taken on their wedding journey, and kept it on the library table.  The sole concession he made to our presumptive relationship was to bring me the responsibility for everything that went wrong, and his shirts for buttons.

The first I heard of the trouble was from Dal.  He waylaid me in the hall after dinner that night, and his face was serious.

“I’m afraid we can’t keep it up very long, Kit,” he said.  “With Jim trailing Bella all over the house, and the old lady keener every day, it’s bound to come out somehow.  And that isn’t all.  Jim and Harbison had a set-to today—­about you.”

“About me!” I repeated.  “Oh, I dare say I have been falling short again.  What was Jim doing?  Abusing me?”

Dal looked cautiously over his shoulder, but no one was near.

“It seems that the gentle Bella has been unusually beastly today to Jim, and—­I believe she’s jealous of you, Kit.  Jim followed her up to the roof before dinner with a box of flowers, and she tossed them over the parapet.  She said, I believe, that she didn’t want his flowers; he could buy them for you, and be damned to him, or some lady-like equivalent.”

“Jim is a jellyfish,” I said contemptuously.  “What did he say?”