There was a funny set after this, with a short-sighted old gentleman blundering over everything he did, getting mixed up with motor cars, carried up by a balloon, tumbling down the funnel of a ship, and finally being rolled out flat by a steam roller, and pulling himself together and walking off. “Always feel sorry for people who have to wear glasses,” I remarked. “It improves some people.” “I don’t agree with you. See how peculiar our old joker looks at the office.” He stared at me. “Surely you don’t mean that Miss Maitland?” he said. “Of course I mean that Miss Maitland. Who else should I be referring to?” He pressed the palm of a hand against his forehead. “Let us get this straight,” he urged. “We seem to be in a muddle. Your name is Maitland, isn’t it?” “My name is Barnes. Up to the present.” “Then that confounded new messenger boy took my shilling and mixed up the information, and”—he stopped and fanned himself—“and you received the letter I intended for her.” “I wish to goodness,” I said forcibly, “that some of you men had got a little more common sense.” * * * * * Mother says everything in this world happens for the best, and in all probability there’s some one else waiting for me somewhere. Mother says I have plenty of time in front of me; mother herself was twenty-eight before she married. Mother says there is no need for me to feel nervous until I get past that age. XII—HERO OF HAMMERTON STREET HE had been away so long that few people remembered him, but his last exploit before leaving ensured that in the minds of those few he remained clear and definite. His wife, when she set out to meet him, was accompanied by a Reception Committee of three, and as they waited outside the large building where he had been staying for the last few months (his hosts kept several important establishments in various parts of the country and he had spent part of the time at one, part at others), as they waited, I say, under the avenue of trees well away from the front door—having, as a point of delicacy, no desire to be seen by the servants about the place—they speculated on the probable improvement in his personal appearance. Members of the Committee recalled precedents where So-and-so went away stout and unhealthy on a vacation of similar length, and came back so trim and brown that his own sweetheart would not have known him had she remained in the neighbourhood. “Here he is!” cried the wife suddenly. “I could tell him, bless ’is heart, in a thousan’.” “That ain’t him!” “He’s got a short beard, at any rate,” urged the wife, admitting her error grudgingly as the visitor was claimed and marched off by another lady. “They all ’ave. Try to use your intelligence, why don’t you!”