Page:Anstey--Tourmalin's time cheques.djvu/106

102 Miss Tyrrell. For hitherto he had seen no necessity to mention to one young lady that he was even distantly acquainted with the other. As he never by any chance drew them both together, there seemed no object in volunteering such information.

But this only made him more apprehensive of a scene when his next turn with Miss Tyrrell arrived. Perhaps, he thought, it would be wiser to keep away from the Boomerang for a week or two, and give them all time to calm down a little.

However, he had the moral, or rather the immoral, courage to present a check [sic] as usual at the end of the next week, with results that were even less in accordance with his anticipations than before.

It came about in this way: He was comfortably seated by the fireplace opposite Sophia in a cosy domesticated fashion, and was reading to her aloud; for he had been let off the orrery that evening. The book he was reading by Sophia's particular request was Ibsen's Doll's House, and it was not the fault of the subject (which interested her deeply), but of Peter's elocution, which was poor, that, on