While it may be true that our story has had no middle, one may choose its beginning point and ending point with some exactitude, yet both have grown so extenuated as to preclude the existence of that part which should connect them, in the way, say, that a single strand of spaghetti may be engaged upon and nicely finished up, with only a long passage of embarrassment and social uncertainty in between, dripping sauce on one’s chin and shirt front and leaving no doubt, amongst the gathered dinner partners (who did not, mercifully, appear in the intervening chapters) that the object of their approbation was, in fact, you; thus, I must conclude this unsatisfactory narrative with the bald information the Geoffrey did successfully prevail upon Madge to relinquish the hair-clasp that was assumed to have been stolen but was, happily, only misplaced and recovered in the barest nick of time.
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