A Clash and a Kiss

The clash that came that evening had been threatening for some time.
Take an immovable body, represented by Mr. Harbison and his square jaw,
and an irresistible force, Jimmy and his weight, and there is bound to
be trouble.

The real fault was Jim's. He had gone entirely mad again over Bella, and
thrown prudence to the winds. He mooned at her across the dinner table,
and waylaid her on the stairs or in the back halls, just to hear her
voice when she ordered him out of her way. He telephoned for flowers and
candy for her quite shamelessly, and he got out a book of photographs
that they had taken on their wedding journey, and kept it on the library
table. The sole concession he made to our presumptive relationship was
to bring me the responsibility for everything that went wrong, and his
shirts for buttons.

The first I heard of the trouble was from Dal. He waylaid me in the hall
after dinner that night, and his face was serious.

"I'm afraid we can't keep it up very long, Kit," he said. "With Jim
trailing Bella all over the house, and the old lady keener every day,
it's bound to come out somehow. And that isn't all. Jim and Harbison had
a set-to today--about you."

"About me!" I repeated. "Oh, I dare say I have been falling short again.
What was Jim doing? Abusing me?"

Dal looked cautiously over his shoulder, but no one was near.

"It seems that the gentle Bella has been unusually beastly today to Jim,
and--I believe she's jealous of you, Kit. Jim followed her up to the
roof before dinner with a box of flowers, and she tossed them over the
parapet. She said, I believe, that she didn't want his flowers; he could
buy them for you, and be damned to him, or some lady-like equivalent."