Then Mrs. Hawkins addressed her husband and said—but let that pass.
We have all the essential facts of the case as it is. Moreover, a successful author told me last week that unhappy endings are in the worst possible taste just now.
CHAPTER VIII.
Hawkins and his wife had been just one month in their new house.
My memory on that point is particularly clear, for the Executive Committee of the Ladies' Missionary Society met at Hawkins' home the very day they moved in officially; and it had been hanging over me, more or less, that the next assembly of that body was to be held at my own residence.
Not that I am in any way unsympathetic as to church work and benighted savages and such matters; but when half a dozen women get together and discuss a few heathen and a great many hats and similar things, the solitary man in the house is apt to feel——
At any rate, when I saw Mrs. Hawkins enter my door that evening, the first of the Executive Committee to arrive, I experienced a sinking sensation for the moment. Then I secured my hat, mumbled a few excuses, and disappeared, to see how Hawkins was spending the evening.
The inventor himself answered my ring.