"Oh!" said d.i.c.ky dubiously, "that takes a bit of doing. Wait a minute!"

Tilly obediently refrained from speech while her beloved dredged his imagination for further metaphors. They were a curiously old-fashioned couple, these two. That uncanny blend of off-hand _camaraderie_ and jealously guarded independence which const.i.tutes a modern engagement meant nothing to them. They loved one another heart and soul, and were not in the least ashamed of saying so.

Presently d.i.c.ky took up his parable.

"Hearken, O my Daughter," he began characteristically, "to the words of the Prophet. Behold, I tell you an allegory! Do you know what riveting is?"

"No, dear. Women don't understand machinery," replied Tilly resignedly, in the tones of a young mother threatened with an exposition of the mechanism of her firstborn's clockwork engine.

"Well, a rivet," pursued the Prophet, "is a metal thing like a small mushroom. It is used for binding steel plates together, and requires two people to handle it properly. First of all the rivet is heated red-hot, and then a grimy man (called the holder-on) pops the stalk of the mushroom into a hole bored through two over-lapping plates and keeps the little fellow in position with a sort of gripping-machine, while another grimy man (called the riveter) whangs his end of the stalk with a sledge-hammer. That punches the poor little rivet into the shape of a double mushroom, and the two plates are gripped together for good and all."

Tilly nodded her head. The allegory was beginning to emerge from a cloud of incorrect technical detail.

"Now it seems to me," continued d.i.c.ky, "that love is very like that.

Men are the holders-on and women the riveters. I have occupied the position of holder-on several times in my life. I fancy most men do: it is their nature to experiment. (I have also had the post of riveter thrust upon me, but we need not talk about that. One tries to forget these things as soon as possible," he added, with a little wriggle.) "But the point which I want to bring out is this--a rivet can only be used _once_. It may be slipped through various plates by its holder-on in a happy-go-lucky sort of way over and over again; but once it meets the hammer fairly, good-bye to its career as a gallivanting, peripatetic little rivet! It is spread-eagled in a moment, Tilly--fixed, secured, and settled for life. And if it is the right stuff, sound metal all through, it will never wriggle or struggle or endeavour to back upon its appointed task of holding together its two steel plates. It won't _want_ to. It will endure so long as the two plates endure. Nothing can shake him, that little rivet--nothing! Poverty, sickness, misunderstanding, outside interference--nothing will have any effect.

That is the allegory. The wanderings of d.i.c.ky Mainwaring are over. He has flitted about long enough, poking his inquisitive little head into places that were not intended for him; and he has come to the right place at last. One neat straight crack on his impressionable little cranium, and the deed is done! The Freak's place in life is fixed at last. Mutual love has double-ended him, and he is going to hold on now for keeps."

d.i.c.ky was silent for a moment, and then continued:--

"No one but you could have dealt that stroke, Tilly, or I should have been fixed up long ago. I could never have remained engaged to Hilda Beverley, for instance. She was a fine girl, but she did not happen to be my riveter or I her holder-on--that's all. I should have dropped out of my place at the first rattle. Lucky little rivet! Some poor beggars don't get off so cheap. They pop their impulsive little heads into the first opening, and never come out again. But Providence has been good to me, Freak though I am. I have come safe through, to the spot where the Only Possible Riveter in the World was waiting for me. Here we are together at last, settled for life. Launch the ship! _Ting-a-ling_!

Full speed ahead! I have spoken! What are you trembling for, little thing?"

"I was only thinking," replied Miss Welwyn shakily, "how awful it would have been if one of the other girls had been a better riveter." Then she took a deep breath as of resolution.

"d.i.c.ky," she began, "I want to talk to you about something. I think I ought to tell you--"

But as she spoke, the figure of Mr. Carmyle, heralded by unnecessary but well-intentioned symptoms of what sounded like a deep-seated affection of the lungs, appeared among the trees, and announced:--

"Off directly, you two! Connie is just having a last farewell with her mechanics. She has collected quite a bunch of them by this time."

"They have n't taken long over the job," said d.i.c.ky, in a slightly injured tone.

Carmyle, who too had once dwelt in Arcady, smiled.

"An hour and ten minutes," he said concisely.

d.i.c.ky and Tilly said no more, but meekly uprose from the fallen tree upon which they had been sitting and accompanied their host to the road.

All signs of disaster had disappeared. The punctured back tyre stood up once more, fully inflated; the tool-box had been repacked and put away; and Connie, smiling indulgently, sat waiting at the wheel. Far away in the distance could be descried two other cars, rapidly receding from view. They contained in all five knights of the road--grotesquely attired and extremely muddy, but very perfect gentle knights after their kind--who were now endeavouring, in defiance of the laws of the land, to overtake the time lost by their recent excursion into the realms of romantic adventure; all wishing in their hearts, I dare swear, that life's highway contained a few more such halts as this.

"Connie is going to write a book one day," observed Mr. Carmyle, as they climbed into the car, "called 'Hims Who Have Helped Me.' All right behind there?"

The car set off once more.

III

The rest of the day pa.s.sed uneventfully, and as it was spent _a quatre_ need not be described at length.

They sped home in the gathering darkness of a frosty evening. Connie, who had relinquished the wheel to her husband, with instructions to get the car home as speedily as possible--she had not forgotten her promise to go and hear Mr. Rylands's evening sermon--now shared the back seat with Tilly; and the two ladies snuggled contentedly together under the warm rug, silently contemplating the outlines of their squires against the wintry sky.

The car swung in at the lodge gates and began to run along the crackling gravel of the drive. Presently, as they rounded a bend, the lights of the house sprang into view.

"Tea--and a big fire!" murmured Connie contentedly.

To Tilly the sight of the house suggested other thoughts. Suddenly she removed her gaze from d.i.c.ky's broad back and slipped a cold hand into Connie's.

"Will they try to take him from me?" she whispered pa.s.sionately.

One of Connie Carmyle's many gifts was her ability to catch an allusion without tiresome explanations. Straightway she turned and looked deep into the appealing grey eyes beside her. Her own brown ones glowed indomitably.

"If they do, dear," she answered--"fight for him."

"I will," said Tilly, setting her teeth.

The two girls gripped hands in the darkness.

CHAPTER XVI

AN IMPOSSIBLE FAMILY

Amelia Welwyn, grievously overweighted by a tray containing her father's breakfast, tacked unsteadily across the floor of the drawing-room at Russell Square; and, having reached the door of her parent's bedroom, proceeded to arouse the attention of its occupant by permitting the teapot to toboggan heavily into one of the panels.

"Don't come in!" said a m.u.f.fled voice.

"Half-past eleven, Daddy," announced Amelia cheerily. "Your breakfast!"

"In the fender, my child," replied the voice.

Amelia obediently put over her helm, and despite a heavy list to starboard induced by a sudden shifting of ballast (in the form of the hot-water jug) ultimately weathered the sofa and deposited the breakfast tray in the fender, without throwing overboard anything of greater moment than a piece of b.u.t.tered toast.

By the fireside, in a very large armchair, sat a small, alert, wizened, and querulous old lady of eighty-one.

"Cup of tea, Grannie?" said Amelia.

"What's that?" enquired Mrs. Josiah Banks--late of Bedfordshire (or Cambridgeshire).

"Will you have a cup of tea?" repeated the child in a louder voice.

"No," replied her aged relative; "I won't."

"Very well, then," said Amelia good-temperedly. "Now you two, not so much of it, if you please!"