“Don’t be so annoying, Wolf!” she cried. “There! I’m hungry, I tell you. Haven’t you got any eggs for us?”

He moved away obediently to the stove, made his arrangements for boiling three eggs⁠—two for himself and one for her⁠—and remained there on guard, his watch in his hand.

The audible ticking of his watch, as he concentrated his mind upon it, answered the louder ticking of the clock in the parlour across the passage. “Time again!” he sighed. And then he thought, “But I’ve got the power to deal with far more serious jolts to my happiness than this finding out that a girl’s ‘reality’ is not my ‘reality’!”