"What on earth are you listening for ?" Again it pleased him to answer her with a riddle.
"Italian opera," he said; and turning back to the keyboard he began-- "Woman is fickle False altogether Moves like a feather Borne on the breezes--" "Did you ever sing when you were flying ?" she asked, trying to shake him out of his mood.
The question proved a happy one.

For nearly two hours they chatted and smiled and hummed old airs together--that is to say, Wally hummed them and Mary tried, for, as you know, she couldn't sing but could only follow the melody with a sort of a deep note far down in her throat, always pretending that she wasn't doing it and shyly laughing when Wally nodded in encouragement and tried to get her to sing up louder.
"Eleven o'clock!" he exclaimed at last.

"That's the first time in three months--" Whatever it was, he didn't finish it, but when he bade her good-bye he said in a low voice, "Young lady, do you know that you played the very Old Ned with my life when you turned me down ?" But Mary wouldn't follow him there, either.
"Good-bye, Wally," she said, and just before he went down to his car, she saw him standing on the step, his face turned toward the drive as though still listening for that distant sound--that sound which never came.
The riddle was solved the next morning.
Helen appeared at the office soon after nine and the moment she saw Mary she said, "Has Wally 'phoned you this morning ?" "No," said Mary.
Her cousin looked relieved.
"I want you to fib for me," she said.

"You know the way the men stick together....

Well, the women have to do it, too....