and when he looked at the clock it was fourteen minutes past four. In
the act of looking at the clock, his eye had to traverse the region of
the sofa. On the sofa were one parasol and two gloves. Astonishing,
singular, disconcerting, how those articles--which, after all, bore no
kind of resemblance to any style of furniture or hangings--seemed,
nevertheless, to refurnish the room, to give the room an air of being
thickly inhabited which it never had before!

Then she burst into the kitchen unexpectedly, with a swish of silk that
was like the retreat of waves down the shingle of some Atlantic shore.

"My dear uncle," she protested, "please do make yourself scarce. You are
in my way, and I'm very busy."

She went to the cupboard and snatched at some plates, two of which she
dropped on the table, and three of which she took into the kitchen.

"Have ye got all as ye want?" he questioned her politely, anxious to be
of assistance.

"Everything!" she answered, positively, and with just the least hint of
an intention to crush him.

"Have ye indeed!"

He did not utter this exclamation aloud; but with it he applied balm to
his secret breast. For he still remembered, being an old man, her
crushing him in the park, and the peril of another crushing roused the
male in him. And it was with a sardonic and cruel satisfaction that he
applied such balm to his secret breast. The truth was, he knew that she