"Is your mother dead?" she asked, more gently. "Oh, no. She is very well, thank you," said Tim. "But you said she had been called away." "So she has." "Where?" "To Holloway Gaol," explained Tim softly. "She is a Militant Suffragette. She tried to burn down Madame Tussaud's. I miss her very much," he added with a sigh. "She comes out about twice a week, under the Cat and Mouse Act. I meet her at the prison gate with sandwiches, but she never kisses me, because her mouth is too full. Will you?" "It seems to me, Mr. Rendle," remarked Miss Jennings, biting her lip, "that you and I are wasting our time. I have some work to do for Mr. Meldrum. I'll trouble you to get out of this office into the show-room." "Certainly, Miss Jennings," replied Timothy, striking an attitude. "Good-bye! I will face this thing like a man. I will fight it down. I shall probably go and shoot big game--in Regent's Park. May I send you a stuffed elephant? Or would you prefer a flock of pumas? I don't know what a puma is like, but the keeper will tell me." The clatter of the typewriter drowned further foolishness, and Timothy departed to his duties. Here the incident would have ended, but for Miss Jennings's feminine inability to leave well alone. "Haven't you got a young lady of your own?" she enquired one day of Tim, _à propos des bottes_. "Yes," said Tim rapturously; "I have." "Then, why--" Timothy hastened to explain. "Because I haven't met her yet. You cannot expect a lady to kiss you for your mother," he pointed out, "until you have spoken to her. The object of my affections lives in a castle in the air, and she has never actually come down to earth yet." But Miss Jennings's attention had wandered. "Kissing is a queer thing," she said musingly. "It doesn't seem so after a while," Tim hastened to inform her. "If you had got a young lady of your own," continued Miss Jennings, evidently debating a point which had occupied her attention before, "and you were to kiss another one, in a manner of speaking there would be no harm done." "None whatever," agreed Tim heartily. "What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over," continued Miss Jennings sententiously. "Selah!" corroborated the expectant Timothy. "But if the eye _was_ to see--my word!" Miss Jennings inserted a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter, and continued:-- "Seems to me, kissing another young lady's young gentleman is just like picking up her cup of tea and taking a drink out of it. If she don't get to know about it, no one's a penny the wiser or a penny the worse. But if she does--well, she feels she simply _must_ have a clean cup! So don't you take any risks, Mr. Rendle. You've such a silly way of talking that I don't know whether you have a young lady or not. If you haven't one now, you will have some day. If you have--one that's at all fond of you--and go kissing me, you will be sorry directly afterwards."