But if I don't say anything--and things go wrong--" One of the accountants entered--the elder one--with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

On seeing the visitor, he drew back.
"Don't let me interrupt you," whispered Helen to Mary.

"I'll run in and see Burdon for a few minutes--" Absent-mindedly Mary began to look at the papers which the accountant placed before her--her thoughts elsewhere--but gradually her interest centred upon the matter in hand.
"What ?" she exclaimed.

"A shortage as big as that last year?
Never!" The accountant looked at her with the same quizzical air as an astronomer might assume in looking at a child who had just said, "What?
The sun ninety million miles away from the earth?
Never!" "Either that," he said, "or a good many bearings were made in the factory last year--and lost in the river--" "Oh, there's some mistake," said Mary earnestly.

"Perhaps the factory didn't make as many bearings as you think." Again he gave her his astronomical smile, as though she were saying now, "Perhaps the moon isn't as round as you think it is; it doesn't always look round to me." "I thought it best to show you this, confidentially," he said, gathering the papers together, "because we have lately become conscious of a feeling of opposition--in trying to trace the source of this discrepancy.
It seems to us," he suggested, speaking always in his impersonal manner, "that this is a point which needs clearing up--for the benefit of every one concerned." "Yes," said Mary after a pause "Of course you must do that.