"And so the clock stopped!" observed Simon Loggerheads.
"Yes," said Mary. "If it hadn't been for the sheer accident of that clock stopping, we shouldn't be sitting here on this sofa now, and Dick would be in that chair, and you would just be beginning to tell him that we are engaged." She sighed. "Poor Dick! What on earth will he do?"
"Strange how things happen!" Simon reflected in a low voice. "But I'm really surprised at that clock stopping like that. It's a clock that you ought to be able to depend on, that clock is."
He got up to inspect the timepiece. He knew all about the clock, because he had been chairman of the presentation committee which had gone to Manchester to buy it.
"Why!" he murmured, after he had toyed a little with the pendulum, "it goes all right. Its tick is as right as rain."
"How odd!" responded Mary.
Simon Loggerheads set the clock by his own impeccable watch, and then sat down again. And he drew something from his waistcoat pocket and slid it on to Mary's finger.
Mary regarded her finger in silent ecstasy, and then breathed "How lovely!"—not meaning her finger.
"Shall I stay till he comes back?" asked Simon.
"If I were you I shouldn't do that," said Mary. "But you can safely stay till eleven-thirty. Then I shall go to bed. He'll be tired and short [curt] when he gets back. I'll tell him myself to-morrow morning at breakfast. And you might come to-morrow afternoon early, for tea."