eady . . . But had he not refused her the wherewithal to remember him—the pearls she needed as the clou of her dear collection, the great relic among relics?
"Would you trust me with your studs?" she asked him, in a voice that could be heard throughout the quadrangle, with a smile that was for him alone.
There was no help for it. He quickly extricated from his shirt-front the black pearl and the pink. Her thanks had a special emphasis.
The MacQuern placed the Magic Canister before her on the table. She pressed the outer sheath down on it. Then she inverted it so that the contents fell into the false lid; then she opened it, looked into it, and, exclaiming "Well, this is rather queer!" held it up so that the audience whose intelligence she was insulting might see there was nothing in it.
"Accidents," she said, "will happen in the best-regulated canisters! But I think there is just a chance that I shall be able to restore your property. Excuse me for a moment." She then shut the canister, released the false lid, made several passes over it, opened it, looked into it and said with a flourish "Now I can clear my character!" Again she went among the crowd, attended by The MacQuern; and the loans— priceless now because she had touched them—were in due course severally restored. When
