position of affairs any better. I edged away a couple of inches, and sat staring before me, the old brow beginning to get slightly bedewed.
And then suddenly—well, you know how it is, I mean. I suppose everyone has had that ghastly feeling at one time or another of being urged by some overwhelming force to do some absolutely blithering act. You get it every now and then when you’re in a crowded theatre and something seems to be egging you on to shout “Fire!” and see what happens. Or you’re talking to someone and all at once you feel “Now, suppose I suddenly biffed this bird in the eye!”
Well, what I’m driving at is that at this juncture, with her shoulder squashing against mine and her back-hair tickling my nose, a perfectly loony impulse came sweeping over me to kiss her.
“No, really?” I croaked.
“Have you forgotten?”
She lifted the old onion and her eyes looked straight into mine. I could feel myself skidding. I shut my eyes. And then from the doorway there spoke the most beautiful voice I had ever heard in my life.
“Give me that cat!”
I opened my eyes. There was good old Aunt Jane, that queen of her sex, standing before me, glaring at me as if I were a vivisectionist and she had surprised me in the middle of an experiment. How this pearl among women had