"Mr. Tourmalin!" she cried, "I--I must not listen to you! You can't possibly mean what you seem to mean. It is wrong--wrong to me, and wrong to her--to say things that--that, for all you know, you are not free to say! Don't let me think badly of you!" Peter was absolutely horrified! What had he said to agitate her like that? He had merely meant to express the pleasure he found in these brief and stolen visits to the _Boomerang;_ and she had misconstrued him like this! At all hazards, he must explain now, if it took him days to make it clear. "My dear Miss Tyrrell," he protested earnestly, "you quite misunderstood me--you did, indeed! Pray be calm, and I will endeavour to make my position a little clearer than I'm afraid I have done. The worst of it is," he added, "that the whole thing has got into such a muddle that, for the life of me, I can't exactly make out what my position is at the present moment!" "You can if you will only recollect that you are this mourning-pin," said a familiar voice; and, with the abruptness characteristic of the Time Cheque system, he was back in his study, staring at the ground glass globe of the lamp and the transfixed orange. The clock behind him was striking nine, and Sophia was offering him a pin with a big black head. "Oh! am I the mourning-pin?" he repeated, helplessly. "Really, Peter," said Sophia, "I think the pin, just at this moment, has the more intelligent expression of the two. Do try to look a little less idiotic! Now, see; you stick the pin into the orange to represent your point of view, and then keep on twirling it slowly round." So Peter twirled the orange slowly round for the remainder of the evening, though his thoughts were far away with Miss Tyrrell. He was wondering what she could have thought of him, and, worse still, what she would think if she could see him as he was employed at that moment? "I tell you what we must do, Peter,--when you get a little more advanced," said Sophia, enthusiastically, that evening, "we must see if we can't pick up a small secondhand orrery somewhere--it would be so nice to have one!" "Oh, delightful!" he said, absently. He was not very clear as to what an orrery was, unless it was the dusty machine that was worked with handles at sundry Assembly-room lectures he had attended in early youth. But of one thing he felt grimly certain--that it was something which would render it necessary to draw more Time Cheques! CHAPTER V. Periodic Drawings. _A Series of Cheques: their Advantages and Drawbacks.--An Unknown Factor.--Uncompleted Confidences.--Ibsen, with Intervals.--A Disappointment.--A "Search-question" from Sophia.--Confidence Restored'._