"Yes," she said, "I think I understand." (As a matter of fact, she did not. To her, as to most women, such a quixotic piece of folly as that to which Dicky had just confessed was incomprehensible. But she desired to please her lover.) "It was like you to do it, but I hate the girl. I expect she was a designing minx. But go on, dear. Go on convincing me. I love it. Say it over and over again." "Say what?" enquired Dicky, who was not aware that he had been saying anything unusual. "Pearls, and things like that," replied Tilly shyly. "Oh!" said Dicky dubiously, "that takes a bit of doing. Wait a minute!" Tilly obediently refrained from speech while her beloved dredged his imagination for further metaphors. They were a curiously old-fashioned couple, these two. That uncanny blend of off-hand _camaraderie_ and jealously guarded independence which constitutes a modern engagement meant nothing to them. They loved one another heart and soul, and were not in the least ashamed of saying so. Presently Dicky took up his parable. "Hearken, O my Daughter," he began characteristically, "to the words of the Prophet. Behold, I tell you an allegory! Do you know what riveting is?" "No, dear. Women don’t understand machinery," replied Tilly resignedly, in the tones of a young mother threatened with an exposition of the mechanism of her firstborn’s clockwork engine. "Well, a rivet," pursued the Prophet, "is a metal thing like a small mushroom. It is used for binding steel plates together, and requires two people to handle it properly. First of all the rivet is heated red-hot, and then a grimy man (called the holder-on) pops the stalk of the mushroom into a hole bored through two over-lapping plates and keeps the little fellow in position with a sort of gripping-machine, while another grimy man (called the riveter) whangs his end of the stalk with a sledge-hammer. That punches the poor little rivet into the shape of a double mushroom, and the two plates are gripped together for good and all." Tilly nodded her head. The allegory was beginning to emerge from a cloud of incorrect technical detail.