“I proposed to your cousin at the Gunton-Cresswells’s dance tonight, and she accepted me.” The news had a surprising effect on Julian. First he blinked. Then he craned his head forward in the manner of a deaf man listening with difficulty. Then he left the room without a word. He had not been gone two minutes when there were three short, sharp taps at my window. Julian returned? Impossible. Yet who else could have called on me at that hour? I went to the front door, and opened it. On the steps stood the Rev. John Hatton. Beside him Sidney Price. And, lurking in the background, Tom Blake of the _Ashlade_ and _Lechton_. _(End of James Orlebar Cloister’s narrative.)_ Sidney Price’s Narrative CHAPTER 17 A GHOSTLY GATHERING Norah Perkins is a peach, and I don’t care who knows it; but, all the same, there’s no need to tell her every little detail of a man’s past life. Not that I’ve been a Don What’s-his-name. Far from it. Costs a bit too much, that game. You simply can’t do it on sixty quid a year, paid monthly, and that’s all there is about it. Not but what I don’t often think of going it a bit when things are slack at the office and my pal in the New Business Department is out for lunch. It’s the loneliness makes you think of going a regular plunger. More than once, when Tommy Milner hasn’t been there to talk to, I tell you I’ve half a mind to take out some girl or other to tea at the “Cabin.” I have, straight. Yet somehow when the assist. cash. comes round with the wicker tray on the 1st, and gives you the envelope (“Mr. Price”) and you take out the five sovereigns—well, somehow, there’s such a lot of other things which you don’t want to buy but have just got to. Tommy Milner said the other day, and I quite agree with him, “When I took my clean handkerchief out last fortnight,” he said, “I couldn’t help totting up what a lot I spend on trifles.” That’s it. There you’ve got it in a nutshell. Washing, bootlaces, bus-tickets—trifles, in fact: that’s where the coin goes. Only the other morning I bust my braces. I was late already, and pinning them together all but lost me the 9:16, only it was a bit behind time. It struck me then as I ran to the station that the average person would never count braces an expense. Trifles—that’s what it is.