Has all this incident of Bob's phonograph been worth recording? Certainly it has. Because, coming as it did on the top of Mrs. Steptoe's reminiscence, and Mrs. Challis's visit to Tulse Hill, it blocked explanations by supplying reasons for the attitude of that hill--reasons valid enough to throw dust in the eyes of Mrs. Challis. The phonograph ruction was an effect, not a cause of ill-temper, and poor Bob was really a victim, not a prime mover in it. It did not matter much to him, for his release was not long delayed, and reinstatement and compensation followed somehow. Besides, his father took him to hear the _Barbiere di Siviglia_ before he went back to school. But he refused to admit that Melba was any better than her record would be, if he might only buy it for three bob. By itself the Steptoe incident might have been explained. So might Challis's correspondence with Judith, or might never have attracted attention. It was the correlation of each to each, and the visit to Tulse Hill, with the subtle touch of Charlotte Eldridge at critical points, that provoked the dissension over the boy's harmless instrument of torture, and gave the Devil his opportunity. Mrs. Steptoe had never recognized the young man whom she remembered as Harris, who, of course, was Challis himself. But the identification was in the air--bound to be made sooner or later. Although Mrs. Challis kept silence towards her husband, she lost no time in recurring to the subject with Mrs. Steptoe. Her own penetration had gone very little way, but Mrs. Eldridge had not been behindhand in finding out that either Kate Verrall had been thrice married, or that the second husband of the Brighton story was Challis himself. Charlotte would not have made a bad female detective. "Don't be a goose!" said she to her bewildered friend. "Don't give the woman any hints. Show her an old photograph of your husband, and see if she doesn't recognize it." Marianne did so, and it was straightway identified as that young Mr. Harris. "But," said she, "that is Mr. Challis, before we were married." Aunt Stingy, completely taken aback for a moment, recovered herself with great presence of mind and laid claim to having said many things she never had said the first minute she set eyes on Mr. Challis. In a very little while she persuaded herself she had known him at once. But she could not be induced to admit that she had got the name wrong; and as it was quite unimportant that she should do so, both ladies agreed to leave her unconvinced. Mrs. Eldridge's suggestion was made at her own semi-detached residence, a quarter of an hour's walk from the Hermitage, where she and Marianne were reviewing the position some days after "it" occurred. The latter had been dwelling on a suggestion of her mother's, a very stupid old woman, that her husband had been, and still was, ignorant of poor Kate's first marriage.