"Yes, of yours and mine. Only indirectly, of course. He happens to be the brother of that schoolmistress Miss Palm that was at the Tore Peak farm last summer."
"Well, the world's a small place. We all belong to the same family."
"And that's why I've told you all this about him."
"But you didn't find out about this relationship on the boat, did you? So you must have met him since."
"Yes,--well, no, that is to say I've seen him a few times, but not to speak to. We just said good morning and how are you and so on. Then he said he was her brother."
"Ha, ha, ha!"
"It was just in passing, quite by accident."
This gave me a good opportunity for saying: "What a lot of things are accidental! It was an accident that I should have stopped under a particular lamppost to look up something, to read a few lines. And then you happened to live there."
"That's right."
"I expect you and the carpenter will be getting married," I said.