Bill knew whom she wanted and pushed Punch into her arms. “You don’t mind very much, do you, now?” she demanded. “It makes a difference, doesn’t it?” “Oh, yes,” said Punch, wriggling a little under the ordeal of being publicly kissed. “I don’t mind as long as it’s Bill.” “I don’t either,” she told him. “It’s surprising what a difference it makes.” And then she went the rounds and kissed the rest of us. When she had finished us off she went back to her place. “There!” she said, contentedly. At that Victoria emerged; got her head, so to speak, above water again. “It’s twenty minutes past ten,” she proclaimed, “and we haven’t decided anything yet.” Old Mrs. Corbin grinned at that. Apparently she regarded the event of the last few minutes as highly decisive. But she was feeling too good-humored to be captious just then. “There’s the item of the necklace,” she remarked. “I suppose that may as well be disposed of now as later. Let’s have it, Punch.” Punch, for the last time it’s safe to say, took it out of his trousers pocket and handed it to his grandmother. “I gave this to Judy,” she said. “But she and her husband both take the view that I bought it back when I wrote Mr. Bruce Applebury a check, this morning, for twenty-five thousand dollars. Judy says she’d rather have some less exciting sort of wedding present. Well, I’m willing to fall in with her views.” She dangled the glorious thing thoughtfully in her old fingers. “Punch has been proved right about the old safe,” she went on. “That’s evidently no place for it, especially as I’ve been known to forget to lock it up. Anyhow it’s been mine for more than half a century, and that’s long enough.” With a sudden gesture of resolution she held it out to Victoria. “Do you want it?” she asked. “Will you take it from me now? Call it a peace offering, if you like.” There was a pretty exciting moment after that. Victoria was so nearly stupefied by the unexpectedness of her mother-in-law’s act that she could at first neither speak nor come up to take the thing. My private belief is that it was a knife edge whether the old woman wouldn’t snatch it back. She hated giving it up, I’m sure. But she wouldn’t have found much satisfaction in keeping it in the bank, and I think, too, she was tired of the long quarrel. The situation resolved itself at length. Victoria came out of her daze, accepted the thing, and made all the proper acknowledgments. And at the end of them, impulsively and a good deal more simply, she said, “I hope we won’t quarrel any more.” “Be reasonable,” said the old lady grimly. “Say, half as much.” Victoria laughed and fastened the pearls around her neck. We all crowded around her and admired them in a buzz of talk. It was silenced presently by old Mrs. Corbin’s voice. “If there’s nothing more to dispose of,” she said, “and I can’t see that there is, I think I’ll excuse everybody but Miss Digby and take my nap.”