But he was oddly determined about it. “I can keep on trying till I do,” he assured me. So I gave over the ungrateful rôle of obstructionist and started in to help. “You’ll want a parson as well as a license,” I pointed out, and named a man who I thought might be willing to serve. “He’s quite a nice young chap, new here in the village. He’s been out to see me three or four times since I’ve been laid up--out of pure amiability, nothing professional about it--and we’ve become pretty good friends. I’ll give you a card to him. You can tell him your story, and if he wants any confirmation that I can give him, he can call me up. He won’t mind getting up early, so on your way back with the license you can stop and bring him along. You’ve a car, haven’t you?” “Quite a good one,” said Judy. “I don’t know whose it is.” Bill looked a little startled at that. Then he grinned. “Oh well,” he said, “what’s one small sport roadster among friends? I’ll bring it back all right.” Judy went, but no farther than the door, to see him off. “You know, I like Bill,” she said, in the thoughtful manner of one announcing a discovery, when she came back into my sitting-room. And she wouldn’t agree, when I laughed, that there was anything funny about it. “It’s an entirely different thing from being in love with him,” she insisted. “He’s got what they used to call--in old-fashioned novels, you know--delicacy. I’m sure I know why he was in such a hurry to get off. It was because we’d got around to the necklace, and he doesn’t like to talk about it. He didn’t want to hear me tell you about it, and he knew I was going to. It is a dirty sort of story, of course, but--well, there it is. You want me to tell you about it, don’t you?” “Lord, _yes_!” I cried. Really, I don’t like whitewash much better than she does. I added, “I could hardly bear it yesterday when old Mr. Smith came back to the summer-house and kept you from telling it then.” “I didn’t know it, then,” she said. “Not the worst of it. The real worst of it hadn’t happened. “You know I told you--when was it, Wednesday morning when I came over here?--what a jolt mother had got over the newspaper story that Gran was going to give me the necklace? Well, that night, just before dinner, after Gran had told her that she really was going to give it to me, mother told me that she was in trouble about it. “You see, about a year ago, Gran had given her the necklace to take to town to the jeweler to be cleaned and restrung, and mother had had an imitation necklace made then. She told me she’d done it because the real one was likely to be stolen any time out of that silly old safe Gran kept it in, especially now that she was taking so much dope and forgot to lock it half the time. She put the real one in the bank, she said, where it would be safe, and brought the imitation back to grandmother. It got by with Gran, all right. She never suspected a thing.