Front matter (continued 2)

Funny old 'David.'

CHAPTER XI

Here's more than half the summer slipped away. The house has buzzed and overflowed with the boys whom Ross brings home.

Every day for eight whole weeks I have been out, riding or walking in the Hickley woods, sometimes with father, many times alone with Michael.

I love this man I'm going to marry very deeply, but I wouldn't let him know it. He dislikes 'the truest form of kindness' even more than all my other male things do!

Sometimes after a day of delight together he says as he goes home,—

'I've hardly seen you, darling.'

'Why, I've let you stay all day,' I say reproachfully.

'Yes, but I haven't really had you; you've eluded me. You drive me mad, Meg, with your little air of cool aloofness.'

But what would he? Is a woman to be done out of her wooing because a man chose once to be a caveman and talked of things belonging to him, before he'd even got them? So naturally I tilt my chin a little when he talks like that, and hold out my hand to say good-night, and watch out of the tail of my eye to see how he is liking it! But sometimes it's——'

'No, I won't stand any more of it to-night.' and then follows that mastering kiss which makes me really his for just that moment, and sends my thoughts and feelings whirling so that I try the harder to elude him afterwards!

One day this week I felt unusually romantic, so I read the Sonnets from the Portuguese.

'Oh, beautiful, Elizabeth,' I said, 'but simple, when you come to think of it. I'm sure that I could write one just as good, and I love my man every bit as much as you did Robert.'

So here is my Maiden Effort and probably my Swan Song:—

'At night I think of you, beloved.

Dream that I see your face,

Fancy I feel you kiss me

As I rest in your embrace.

But at the rose glow of morning

You fade like a summer mist,

And I wake, and long

For a dream that has gone,

For a face that I fancied I kissed.'

Of course it is not strictly accurate, for I never have the luck to dream of Michael, 'but a Poet,' I observed as I wrote the last lines down, 'is not expected to be verbally truthful in a Poem.'

'What, still slinging ink, little 'un?' said father, coming into my room at this point, 'why, you've got a blob on your neck!'

And then he picked up this chapter in that impertinent way he has and read it, with his eyes all curled up at the corners.

'Might one criticise the poem, Meg?' he asked diffidently.

'Oh, do,' I replied, conscious that it was beyond all criticism.

'Your "poem,"' he said, getting the word out with difficulty, 'has defective rhymes, darling. "Long" does not rhyme with "gone," nor is the—um—"poem" a sonnet.'

'But I never said it was, daddy.'

'No, Meg?'

'Oh, father,' I said, shaking his arm, 'it would look deliriously beautiful printed on good paper with wide margins and rough edges?'

Nannie said, 'You give it to Master Michael, dearie. He'll like it, and as to rhymes, why the stuff your father reads never has any.'

So I presented it to Michael, and I had no illusions then as to whether I were kissed or not.

Later, at tea, father had just observed that, like the Ephesians, we were 'in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar,' when a telegram was brought to him.

'The tone of this household will have to buck up a bit,' he remarked as he read it.

'It will after to-morrow,' grinned Charlie Foxhill, 'when Meg's gone, sir.'

(For oh, to-morrow is my wedding day, just fancy.)

'It's got to buck up before that,' father replied; 'this wire is from the new Bishop of Ligeria, he's coming here this afternoon and wants to stop the night. He'll have to stay on for the wedding, of course.'

'Oh, daddy,' I exclaimed in great disgust, 'we can't have this Ligerian fossil here to-morrow, it'll spoil everything, besides, there isn't a bed.'

'He'll have to sleep in his suit-case then, and his chaplain in the lid, Meg; there's no time to put him off, and do try to behave like 'a clergyman's daughter' while he's here, little 'un! Why, good gracious!'

For there was the Bishop of Ligeria, and a livid kind of chaplain who looked like a limp curl-paper, alighting at the front door from a motor-car.

Daddy rushed out into the hall and I after him. I wished I had had time to change into something black, as father seemed so anxious to make a good impression on the Bishop, but I managed to part my hair in the middle by the hall glass and I turned the collar of my blouse up instead of down.

And then one of those terrible delusions came over me, for I thought father seized the Bishop by the hand and shook it violently, exclaiming,—

'Hallo, Porky, what priceless luck.'

'What about that ten bob, old bean?' said Porky.

Then father turned and saw me with my hair parted down the middle, and the chaplain, partially paralysed with horror.

'My daughter, me lud,' he said, and led the Bishop and his attendant into the drawing-room for a belated tea.

I got away as soon as I could. I felt I must have quiet to think things out. Is this another delusion, or did father really call a Bishop 'Porky'? Nannie said once that putting the feet in hot water draws the blood from the head and eases mental strain, so I decided to have a bath before dinner.

I ran into daddy in the corridor.

'Meg, you've torn the lace on your dressing-gown; I told you so yesterday. Why isn't it mended?'

'Cotton,' I wailed, 'is threepence a reel.'

'Bad as that, Meg?'

'Worse, my honoured parent, worse.'

'Wild oats, Meg?'

'Sacks.'

'Debts?'

I nodded.

'Tell me the uttermost, my erring child.'

'Fourpence to Nannie, and five and threepence to Ross.'

I escaped into the bathroom and slammed the door. I sang a hymn as I bathed; it was that one the children love so, 'Days and Moments Quickly Flying.' I thought it might help to restore the tone of the household.

Daddy shoved five and sevenpence under the door with a note to say that a lady in the house was very ill and would I either sing something else, or go in the next street, as that hymn made her nervous, so I chanted (being always anxious to oblige)—

'Beer, beer, glorious beer,

Drink till you're made of it,

Don't be afraid of it,

Glorious, glorious beer.'

Another note was pushed under the door then to say that the lady was dead now, and the Bishop thought it would be well for me to sign the pledge (enclosed).

The Bishop took me into dinner. I behaved just like a clergyman's daughter.

'Sorry,' said Michael, suddenly dropping his fish fork, 'but I can't, after all.'

'Can't what?'

'Marry the girl, sir.'

'De'ah me,' said the Bishop, 'this is most distressing, very.'

'What would your ludship advise,' said father, looking at me hopelessly, 'you see, I can't keep her here either, for the sake of the parish.'

'There is a home for Decayed Gentlewomen at Putney,' the Bishop began; 'I should be very happy if my vote and influence would be of any help, but I doubt'—he continued surveying me solemnly—'whether they would take her. She is so ah—er—um—so exceedingly decayed.'

After dinner the Bishop nodded in the direction of his chaplain and whispered to me,—

'It sings. Most painful. Very.'

So of course I asked it to. Aunt Constance accompanied its impassioned wail.

'If I should die

To-night,

My friends would look upon my face

With tears,

And kissing me, lay snow-white flowers against

My hair.

Keep not your kisses for my cold,

Dead face,

But let me feel them

Now.'

(Unknown author).

Father looked round the congregation with a cold eye. He has views about guests.

'Thank you very much, Mr Williams. Won't you sing something else?'

And Mr Williams went upstairs to get another.

'Oh,' sobbed Charlie Foxhill, laying his head down on Ross's shoulder, 'keep not your kisses for my cold——'

'No one,' my brother giggled, 'can look upon your face without tears, old thing, but you shall have snow-white flowers all right; here, can you feel them now?' and he shoved a camellia and several wet carnations down Charlie's collar, and the Bishop mopped his eyes and remarked in his best Oxford drawl,—

'Such a good chap, really, if he only wouldn't. Top-hole, very.'

At nine-thirty father said to Michael, 'You can go away now.'

'Where, sir.'

'Anywhere you jolly well like so long as it's far enough. I'm going to take my only daughter for a last walk in the woods. Of course, if you thought it worth while to be at the park gates at ten-thirty to say good-night I might——'

'If you could make it twenty to eleven I could bear it better,' said Michael, 'it would be ten minutes less——'

'Ten-thirty is the very latest, Michael. An hour is as much as I can stand of her myself,' said father firmly, shoving him out into the hall.

'Oh, daddy,' I giggled, as we wandered out into the summer night, 'I haven't laughed so much for years. Who is Porky, and why and when did you bet him ten bob?'

'He was my fag at Eton, Meg, and I bet him ten bob he'd never be a Bishop.'

'Have you paid him yet?'

'I've given him six and tenpence on account, little 'un. Why, he's only a colonial.'

'Oh, daddy! you really are a poppet; you're much too nice to be a parson; whatever made you want to go into the Church?'

'I didn't want to, Meg. He made me.'

'What, that man, the Bishop of Ligeria?'

'No, The Man, the Bishop of my soul, darling.'

'Oh, father!'

'Didn't you know that I was once going into the army, Meg? It seemed to me then, as now, the only conceivable thing to do, as the Fotheringhams have always been soldiers. But I found that HE had other views about it, and I had to chuck it up at the last minute. My father was so furious with me that he chucked me out.'

'Oh, daddy!'

'And I have felt lately that there is something else I am required to do, and I don't want to do it. Sometimes I think that this pleasant Devonshire life is not the one to which I am to be allowed to 'settle down.'

'And yet you like Him, father?'

'And yet I "like Him," Meg, but, oh, I really don't think I can let you be married in the morning. I shall have to get Porky to say the bit of the service that really matters, for I shall be tempted to leave it out.'

And although father laughed as he said it, yet, from the struggle in his face, I seemed to understand suddenly that my marriage was for him only another 'bit of harness' which had been 'hewn' away. But why?'

Then Michael met me at the gate at half-past ten.

'There's a little cottage high up on a Cornish cliff, Meg.'

'How interesting,' I said.

'It's rather a sweet place for a day or two.'

'Oh, really?'

'And after that a bit of sea, which will be smooth'—(but will it?)—'and a long journey, till we come to a little village where two men will be sitting on a wall waiting for me, and then the mountains for my honeymoon, my Paradiso!'

You see, I am to have a quite unusual wedding tour. There is to be no dallying with love beside a rippling and sequestered waterfall, alone with Michael, who, at intervals, would strain me to his heart. No, there will always be those two young men with us who are going to strain my muscles all the time. I am going up a 'chimney' for my honeymoon. I have had an ice-axe for a wedding present and a most amazing pair of boots If I love and honour Michael, and obey him and the other two young men, I may even go up the wrong side of a mountain some day! 'It all depends!'

Now I had not felt worried about these arrangements till that moment by the gate, but Michael's then unveiled my eyes. I understood all in a moment that here was the stark and awful tragedy of my life. The mountains were his honeymoon, the two young men—his bride. The cottage and the cliffs, the sea, the long journey?—less than the rust that never stained his ice-axe. His wife? Just a Cook's tour (personally conducted) to his bride—his two young men—his mountains—his honeymoon—his Paradiso.

But he learned there, by the gate, that an inferno comes for some before their paradiso. In a storm of indignation I declined to be his Cook's tour!

'All is over, Captain Ellsley.'

'No, it has not yet begun, Meg.'

'Oh, Michael! Oh, please, Michael.'

'And so do you think to-morrow you could bring yourself to kiss me of your own accord, just once, my darling?'

And now I am alone in my own little room for the last time, for by this hour to-morrow I shall have more 'experience,' I shall be linked up with all the other wedded lovers of the world: Charles Kingsley and Fanny Grenfell, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, William Gladstone and Catherine Glynn! Oh! poor old Dante! Why wasn't he content to love his Beatrice and not marry Gemma? But then the classics would have been the poorer. He might not have written his Inferno or said:—

'My wife

Of savage temper, more than aught beside

Hath to this evil brought me.'

What?

Oh, yes, I know he didn't actually say it of himself, but his own domestic hearth suggested it. And, anyway, I will not be reproved for ignorance of Dante by—the General Public.

FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER

'But when I became mature, I put away childish things.'

CHAPTER XII

At other times when I have settled down to write, the words have seemed to hurry from my brain so fast that my pen has had to race along to catch the thoughts before they passed into oblivion. But now—though the desire to write consumes me like a fire, the words come haltingly. I am afraid lest I should mar the beauty of this thing I know about. For I have found in marriage the loveliest experience of all.

For on my wedding day, when all the flowers and jewels and lace were laid aside, and all the good-byes said; the last kiss given to my father, and the farewells waved to all the loving village folk who were gathered at the gates to watch me go, I felt a little lonely, and wondered, as I drove away, if anywhere could ever be again so sweet as that old home.

When the little journey to the coast was made, and the sun set in a glow of splendour in the sea, the quiet night came down and the stars hung softly like jewelled lamps about a purple sky. Out in the windless, magical sea-scented night my husband caught and kissed me suddenly,—

'You can't send me away to-night, you little fluttering thing.'

But there was something in the quality of his kiss that frightened me, something almost ruthless in the finality of the words, so that I fled away upstairs in wild rebellion, because the summer's dalliance was over. I might elude the man no more. I must say like all the other women,—

'Meet, if thou require it

Both demands,

Laying flesh and spirit

In thy hands.'

Oh, if it only might be 'to-morrow, not to-night,' and when to-morrow came? why then again—to-morrow. Thus Mother Eve passed on to me that fear which caught her once when she, perhaps, was walking in the garden.

I went over to my window and leaned out. The sleeping world lay at my feet. I looked across the cliffs to where the quiet beauty of the sky met the wide splendour of the sea, and the great moon flooded the water, luring me to adventure out upon that rippling, shining pathway, which seemed to lead to God.

And as I looked I realised that all the natural world responded always to the natural laws, and, because of that obedience, there was that restfulness and harmony that had always soothed and quietened me, and the old 'washed' feeling came and swept away rebellion. So—when that time came that Michael shut the door, and there was no one in the room but him and me—he found 'duty' waiting, and that primeval fear that Eve passed down the ages to her daughter.

I suppose some of my thoughts were painted in my face, for I saw all that was dogged and ruthless in the man rise up—directed against himself, not me. I watched him beat down and back that ache and longing that was in his eyes when he came in, till there was nothing left but a vast, comprehending tenderness and the strength to wait, until such time as that frightened look had passed from his ladye's eyes.

And in the quiet shelter of his arms I listened to the very perfect things he chose to say. That by reason of the 'worship' he had sworn to give me, there could be no 'demands,' only a lovely gift most urgently desired if I could give a thing, so priceless, willingly.

And then at something wistful in his face, my love rose up and cast out fear—that craven thing. And there was a little kiss upon my husband's lips, so small and light, he hardly knew it there till it had gone—that little first one that I ever gave him 'of my own accord.' He took my hands and with the worship deepening in his eyes he asked,—

'Is my beloved mine?'

There flashed into my mind those words which, I suppose, express most fully the completeness and the glory and perfection of our human love, and which convey, so perfectly, the utter rest and peace and sweet contentment which both should find in marriage, when they love.

So I leaned against my husband and he stooped to hear the whispered words,—

'I am my beloved's, and his desire is towards me.'

So I gave. And in the old surrender of the woman to the man's exultant mastery, I, too, found love's consummation—and lo!—there was bread and wine—a chalice and a sacrament.

I have been married, really, such a very little while, yet in these fifteen months in India I have learned that sometimes women do not give ungrudgingly—that people speak and write of marriage as if its sweet abandonment were a thing of which to be ashamed. But if it were, would Christ have used it as a type of that other union—mystic and wonderful—between His Church and Him?

And so it seems to me that first should come the 'marriage of the minds.' If he 'demands' and she gives grudgingly or of necessity, or with regret, as if for something spoiled—they too are 'wasteful' and have 'cheapened Paradise.' They have not discerned the Sacrament, but have

'Spoiled the bread, and spilled the wine

Which, spent with due respective thrift

Had made brutes men, and men divine.'

And, by the way, I'm sure it's time I got in all those other bits I know about. Those poor birds of the South Pole, still waiting on the ice for me to bring them fame! And then that other king, but oh! he was so dull. He missed the best of everything in life: for William II., 1087, never married; and so of course he never knew what we shall know in four more weeks, that 'A child's kiss, set on thy sighing lips, shall make thee glad.'

And when the labour and the travail are all done, and my baby rests in my arms, I shall have more 'experience.' I shall be linked up with all the other mothers of the world. Oh, dare I say it? Humbly I do. I shall be linked up, faintly and far off, even with Mary.

PART II

FOUR YEARS LATER

CHAPTER I

'I start life on my own account and don't like it.'

Grammar is not my strong point, and I never could quote correctly, but my geography is hopeless. I always remember, however, when I am at sea that the earth revolves around the sun, and on its axis, too, for I can feel the double motion in every fibre of my being.

Now that I am once more on dry land and the universe has ceased to rock I have gone back to my childish and comfortable belief that the world is a nice, firm, square thing fixed on four legs like a dining-room table.

I really am a shocking sailor, though 'the Gidger'[#]—my small daughter—loves the sea. The stewardess was an angel of light to me, yet she insisted on my turning out for all the boat drills. I felt I would so much rather lie in my berth than bother about my place in a boat if we were torpedoed, that it would be so much less exertion to go down comfortably in the big ship than toss about in a small boat on the chance of being saved. One great advantage of mal de mer is that all other sensations are obliterated. I was not conscious of the least fear when the ship next to ours went down, and the fact that our own escaped a like fate by a miracle left me cold. Even my loneliness and misery at my first parting from Michael since our marriage were all forgotten—swallowed up in one great desire to lie down flat and perhaps take a little iced champagne, 'for my stomach's sake,' like poor darling Timothy.

[#] Re the nick-name Gidger, the first 'G' is pronounced as in Gideon and the second 'g' as in German.

Over four whole years of life I've 'drawn a veil,' and, oh, so much has happened since I finished the last chapter.

I've got to know my husband, that's one thing. A woman never really knows a man when first she marries him. That old woman in our village used to say 'the longer you live with a man, the less you like him,' and she ought to know, she was 'thrice widowed.'

So I have discovered that mine is a very quaint person, with primitive, old-world ideas, that make him ruthless with himself and other people about 'work' and 'duty'; and because he never had a sister (and a mother only for an hour), he's rather apt to think any woman who powders her nose is of necessity a painted Jezebel! Shall I ever forget his face on the steamer going out to India, when one of those dear, delicious, natural, American women produced a small mirror and a powder puff in the social hall and said to her friend,—

'Say, Sadie, why didn't you tell me I'd got a nose like a headlight?'

And his expression! when I told him that of course I had the same things in my pocket. Why, good gracious, is there any woman who doesn't powder her nose, though I do agree with him that some of them put it on thicker than they need.

Then, too, he can, and will, only talk upon subjects he understands. Imagine the devastating dullness of a life lived on those lines. But now. he says 'two in a family can't talk, there aren't enough words to go round.' So my black beast (as I call him), has been content to adore and bully me by turns, and fill his life with deeds, and leave the words for other people and his wife. Consequently, I am not perfectly positive yet how much less I like him.

One day, after the war had raged two years in France, he came and told me that he was ordered to the Front, and I could see the soldier and the lover struggling in his face.

'Oh, Meg, I'm going, so I shan't miss it after all, but how can I leave you?'

Other things besides the war have happened in those four years. Daddy did not settle down in Devonshire, but his passion for men's souls has driven him to one of the terrible places of the earth, where he lives among natives, for whom he has always had a kind of abhorrence. He and Porky wage war against the devil over an immense tract of country, for daddy is on the Bench now, and his diocese is next to that of the Bishop of Ligeria. They meet once a year, daddy and his old fag, both consumed with a burning desire that men's bodies should be clean and their souls washed white, both so muscular and so militant that they are utterly unable to comprehend 'the church passive,' or to see why a man can't shoot and ride and crack a joke as well as pray. But then, as Ross used to say, 'Father is a man first and a parson afterwards.' I have sometimes wondered, since I have learned to see things 'farther than my nose,' whether the sentiment expressed so elegantly by my brother did not contain an element of truth, i.e. 'that the chaps in the pews are more likely to listen to what the chap in the pulpit is jawing about if they know he's a good shot and rides as straight as they do.'

But the thrill of the years was Cousin Emily, who, without a word to any one, let her house in Hampstead and turned up one day at daddy's bungalow and announced that she had come to keep house for him and to instil kindness to animals among the natives. My father (with that mediæval humour that made people in the Middle Ages put up gargoyles on their churches) says 'Emily's parrot, Meg, has done more for the cause than any missionary ever born will do. The natives simply love the collect for the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity!'

At one of the annual meetings Porky asked Emily if he could borrow the godly bird for his diocese, but there was that in his eyes which made her know he wanted her as well. So daddy married them, and they are now like the parrot, 'continually given to all good works together!

The paralytic chaplain's health has given out. The strain of one of the annual meetings (or else the climate) was too much for him, so he has been sent home, and has a curacy in England and a wife now, who can lay those 'snow-white flowers' against his hair! And talking of England reminds me that while Michael wrestled with his packing in a kind of sulphurous haze, I pulled strings. If you pull them hard enough in India you can generally make the puppets work, so somehow I got a passage and embarked for England three days after Michael sailed for France.

Captain Everard, a great friend of my brother, sailed in the same boat. He was so kind when I felt sick and kept my small daughter amused.

When I got to Tilbury I was limper than Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'damp rag hung over the back of a chair.' I don't know what I should have done without the dear little stewardess to pack for me, and Captain Everard to help me and the Gidger through the customs, and all the other nightmare horrors of a landing in England in war time. I suppose I said I was 'British' when the Aliens Officer asked me my nationality, but I felt like a disembowelled spirit. (No, I don't mean disembodied!) Captain Everard could not come to London with me, but got me a corner seat in a carriage with only three men in it, nice chaps in the Pioneers, one of whom Captain Everard knew slightly.

CHAPTER II

At last after an interminable and arctic journey, during which I passed through every phase of land and sea sickness and might have died of cold but for a timely dose of brandy from the Pioneers, the train glided into the gloom of St Pancras station. Suddenly everything turned rose colour. Such a delicious surprise! Waiting under one of the shaded lamps was that wounded warrior—Ross. He looked so dear and big and beautiful in his kilt. I flung myself and the Gidger, regardless of life and limb, and the restraining hands of three Pioneers, out of the carriage and into his arms almost before the train had stopped. Did you ever know anything so delightful? He had coaxed the shipping company for information about the boat and got leave from the hospital to meet me. He enveloped us both in a huge hug with his one good arm. Oh, I was pleased to see him after five years, my dear adorable twin brother. I told him about the Pioneers, and he said,—

'Really, Meg, I think drinking spirits in a railway carriage with strange soldiers is about the limit of anything even you've ever done!'

But he thanked them very nicely. He has such charming manners when he chooses (he ought to have, I brought him up), he told them I was such a bad traveller, and that he was much obliged to them for looking after me. The Pioneers said it was a great relief to their minds that some one had met me; so if it was to theirs you can imagine what it was to mine.

The Gidger loved 'Uncle Woss' at once, and was deeply interested in his M.C. ribbon and bandaged arm, and the admiration seemed mutual, for Ross said,—

'Oh, what a Poppet, Meg.'

Whereupon the Gidger, ever athirst for information, asked,—

'What's a Poppet, Uncle Woss?'

My brother replied that a Poppet was a little girl in a white fur coat, and immediately buttoned her up in one, while he called a soldier, who was standing near, to 'bring the other coat,' and, as he helped me on with it, he said, 'You remember Brown, don't you, Meg?'

'Why, Sam! of course I do,' and I shook hands. 'However do you always manage it?'

'Oh, got a knee this time,' said Ross, and stared at Brown, who looked extremely sheepish. 'Where's your maid?' he added.

'Haven't brought her, couldn't get a passage.'

'Oh, what rotten luck; how have you managed?'

'Captain Everard did a lot for me.'

'But not your hair, surely, Meg? (Get a porter, Brown, and fish the baggage out.)'

So while Brown 'fished,' I revelled in my warm coat, and tried to see how it set on me at the back and said, 'Why, Ross, it's sable.'

'Well, you don't think I'd give you a rabbit one, do you?' said my brother.

Being uneconomically inclined myself, I felt I ought to add, 'But what extravagance!'

He scoffed, and said he'd have me know his godmother had left all her money to him, and not to me, that a fur coat was cheaper than pneumonia, anyway, besides being less trouble to one's relatives, and for those two reasons only he had bought it. 'I've got a car waiting outside,' he said, 'so that while remarks on finance, coming from you, are deeply interesting, my child, they are also apt to be expensive, as it's up to thirty bob by now, the train's so late.'

As we drove out of the station Ross said, 'Michael wired to the Savoyard for your rooms, and my hospital is quite close,' and then he added in an airy manner, 'Oh, by the way, I knew you'd want a nursemaid for the Gidger, so I engaged one for you. She's pretty and seems nice, so I didn't bother about references.'

I didn't want to appear ungrateful, so I only murmured that I could see about those later on, and I drew a little closer to him and squeezed his arm for joy at seeing him again, while the Gidger gazed, entranced, out of the window at the traffic.

'Ross,' I said, 'how on earth does Sam always manage it?'

'I dunno,' said Ross, staring through the glass at Sam's impassive back. 'It's extraordinary. When I got this bullet in my arm he came up a moment after, said he'd bust his knee. Sometimes I think he must have some arrangement with the d——'

'With a person that we need not name.'

'Just so,' said Ross, and giggled as he used to do when I reproved him.

But, all the same, it is a funny thing that Sam always has managed to get with Ross, from the time he turned up as the school boot-boy, to the day he appeared in my brother's dug-out with a can and said, 'Hot water, sir,' in just the same old way.

When I arrived at the hotel the 'pretty nursemaid' turned out to be my darling Nannie.

'When you feel you can stop kissing them both, Meg would like your references.'

'References given and required,' laughed Nannie.

'Then the deal's off. Meg's past won't bear looking into.'

Ross had just crammed my rooms with flowers and the air was full of scent. He said Michael told him 'heaps of lilies.' Did he remember that the scent of those is love? I do think, however, he might have ordered the removal of the earwigs.

I was so tired that I came upstairs directly after dinner. The Gidger was already fast asleep.

'Pretty lamb,' said Nannie, just as she always used to do.

So like the gardener's cat in Punch, I felt that we could

'Sit among the greenhouse flowers

And sleep for hours and hours and hours.'

Just before I sailed I got a mail from daddy. He was about to start upon a journey to some scattered mission stations 'to confirm the churches,' and after that he said 'perhaps I shall come home.' Oh, won't it be too topping if he does. He was very excited, too, over the two new missionaries who had come out to the only healthy station. He writes:—

'They're really quite nice, Meg, the Reverend Mister has a heart of gold. She's solid gold right through, only you know, little 'un, those very gold people do have funny clothes and shoes sometimes. I'm afraid she's rather inclined to think that curly hair is "wicked." I don't know what she'd say to yours, Meg, but then the children of the clergy always go quickest to the dogs; you've said that heaps of times, so of course it must be right.'

He finished up:—

'Good-bye, darling, don't forget that whatever the next few months may bring you, "underneath are the Everlasting Arms."'

Daddy is such a comfortable person, he doesn't, like Aunt Amelia, jaw about the war and say it's 'a judgment' every time he writes. When it first broke out he said that God seemed to be speaking to the world with great vigour about something, and was I listening for the bit He meant for me?

Really, when you come to think of it, arms are nice things when one is tired. War makes one tired, all women hate it. I wish Michael wasn't in France. I wish he could have seen his way to take the staff job he was offered.

CHAPTER III

I have had such a glorious sleep! The gardener's cat wasn't in it, but the earwig was—in my bed—and Nannie wouldn't let me kill it because 'earwigs are such good mothers.'

Oh, what bliss a bed is after a bunk, the joy of a motor hoot instead of a fog horn, and the sight of a house opposite one's windows instead of a sickening swirl of green water and sky.

But I felt rather at a loose end, and when Nannie came in with my breakfast I said,—

'I wonder what I'd better do to-day?'

'Buy a hat, I should think, dearie, and then go to the Bank.'

She is a comfort!

She sat on the edge of my bed while the Poppet and I had breakfast. I believe her private opinion is that Michael has kept us short of food, as we ate everything but the crockery, but when a person has lived on a dry biscuit for weeks, a person is apt to feel a bit peckish at the end of such a fast.

Dear old Nannie hasn't altered much, she carries her years lightly, it's just the same kind face, with the hair a little grayer. She says she would have come out to India to me ages ago if it hadn't been for the war. We had so much to say to one another that I got rid of quite a respectable amount of the conversation which had accumulated during the voyage, for I was too sick even to talk!

It is good to be in London. I went to my old shop. 'Estelle' remembered me and said, 'Madame is of a youthfulness inconceivable to have such a big little daughter,' which is most satisfactory. The 'big little daughter' looks enchanting in a white fur cap to match her coat, and I got a small soft brown thing 'of a price preposterous.' Captain Everard called to inquire after me, so I asked him to lunch and thanked him for all he had done for me. He said he hardly recognised me in a vertical position, having seen me prostrate so long. After lunch I spent the afternoon with Ross. He said he was 'quite well.'

'Then why are you in bed?' I inquired politely.

'Matron's orders,' snapped the soldier bit of him. 'Drat the woman,' said my brother.

He hasn't altered much, though the war has painted shadows and grim lines about his mouth; his eyes, too, are sterner than they used to be, otherwise he is the same good-looking, big, teasing, maddening brother. He thought I hadn't changed, and seemed the 'same rum kid.' I saw matron afterwards. She told me that his arm is very badly injured, and she feared at first that he would lose it, but it is on the mend at last, though it will be months before he can go out again, 'for which,' she said, 'you won't be sorry.' Then she added, 'I don't know if you've any plans, but he would be much better if he could be somewhere where it's quiet. When the pain comes on we simply cannot keep the place quiet enough. The slamming of a door, the noise of footsteps in the room make his pain almost unendurable. It's the shot nerve, you know. You can't, in a house like this, keep every door from banging, though we do our best. He would be much better with you in the country, though you would need a nurse. A right arm makes a man so helpless; he can't cut his food up, or dress himself. Of course, there's Sam,' and then she laughed. 'He'll probably be leaving his hospital soon; he's close by, you know.'

'But could he manage? How could he wait on Ross if he can't walk?'

'Oh, he can walk enough for that,' she said. 'He's already interviewed me on the subject more than once. He says the captain only wants an arm which he has got. If you could let him rest his knee all day and just help your brother night and morning it might do, though you'd have the pair of them really on your hands.'

'But do the men ever get leave from hospital like that?' I asked.

'Oh, there is such a thing as extended hospital furlough,' said matron; 'it doesn't usually apply to knees, but all the hospitals are crammed. I dare say I could work it. You'd have to give him time off sometimes to go before his M.O.'

'Well, if you think you can work it,' I said doubtfully.

'You can work most things, if you know how! Your brother's very angry with me to-day because I made him stay in bed after the excitement of your arrival. I am in very deep disgrace,' said matron, smiling.

As I went along the frosty streets I promised myself a perfect orgy of shopping. My wardrobe is too diaphanous for this climate. The cold is almost unbelievable after India. When I got back to the hotel I found the Gidger had had a gorgeous afternoon at the Zoo, and was sitting up in bed, eating her supper, while Nannie cut her bread and butter into 'ladies' fingers,' as she had done, oh, how many times for me when I was four years old.

I told Nannie matron's views, and she said, 'Why don't you go into rooms, Miss Margaret? Then you could have him. You and I could manage for him.'

'You can see him letting a "parcel of women" hang round him, can't you, Nannie? No, it must be a nurse or Sam, if we can get him.' But I agreed to wire to Fernfold, where a pal of Nannie lives, who has a friend who takes in lodgers, and would make us comfortable.

Just as I was going down to dinner I got a trunk call. It was Uncle Jasper. 'Your aunt wants to know when you are coming down to us,' he boomed.

'Where are you speaking from?' I asked; 'the Manor House?'

'No, we're at Rottingdean.'

'Wallowing in old churches, at least your uncle is,' came my aunt's voice, a long way off. 'Won't you come to us, darling, I'm so worried about Eustace. No, I can't tell you on the telephone, and we'd so love to have you.'

'Why aren't you at home?' I said.

'Yes, another call; oh, ... don't cut us off!'

'Your aunt,' said Uncle Jasper, seizing the receiver, 'has been very ill with influenza.'

'Nonsense,' said Aunt Constance, 'don't frighten the child, Jasper. I'm all right now, darling.'

'Shall I meet the 2.5 to-morrow?' said my uncle.

So I told him about Ross and Fernfold.

'What's the church there?' he inquired; 'Norman or Early English?'

I could hear his snort of indignation when I said I thought it was a new Wesleyan Chapel! Then we got cut off.

Nannie says that her friend's friend prefers to board her lodgers, 'and you'd better let her, dearie. You won't like contending with the rations.' So it's settled we're to be boarded if we go to Fernfold. I'm so dead tired I must be getting sleeping sickness. Will there be a letter from 'the black beast' in the morning?

CHAPTER IV

Such shoppings! The Poppet and I are now considerably warmer than we were, and, we hope, more beautiful. Certainly Michael is considerably poorer.

I have seen several old friends and had lunch with Monica Cunningham. She has grown very pretty and still moves in the graceful way that made Charlie in the old days call her 'a Greek poem.' She has risen to the occasion, as daddy always said she would, and done the splendid thing like all the other girls—exchanged luxury for hospital work at Hammersmith. She was very amusing about it. She said that at first she had visions of herself in a becoming uniform holding the fevered hands and smoothing the pain-racked brows of wounded warriors, but what she got was all the kicks and none of the halfpence. However, she seemed quite happy.

'Meg,' she said, 'those men I nurse—they are "everything that really matters"—as your father used to say.'

And I wondered if she had learned that other bit of daddy's, i.e. that the lack of grandfathers was not important then!

I tried to get her to talk about Charlie Foxhill, for I'm certain he's been in love with her for years.

'Oh,' she said, 'he's quite a decent boy,' but I think her eyes said something stronger, and I was glad, because I'm devoted to them both.

Then I took the Gidger to Hampstead to call on Aunt Amelia.

In the old days I used to heave a sigh of relief when I came away from 7 Victoria Gardens, and things are still unchanged. One enters a house full of 'judgment' and leaves the 'love' outside in the garden. There is the same high moral tone about Aunt Amelia's conversation. Her 'fydo' does the things he always did. Her drawing-room is still decorated in tones of mustard and bestrewn with antimacassars. Only in the throes of a bilious attack can one appreciate the scheme of colour. My aunt greeted me with her accustomed coolness, but gave a peck to the Gidger's cheek, which that small person promptly rubbed off; this was a bad start.

The same sour-faced maid brought in the same uninteresting, microscopic tea. The Poppet, who is used to a square meal at 4.30, said clearly,—

'Muvver, is this all the tea we're going to have?'

Aunt Amelia remarked acidly that she had bad table manners, and inquired if she had begun to learn the catechism.

Here the Gidger said pleasantly, 'I should like to go home now.'

Whereupon Aunt Amelia observed that she seemed as badly brought up as most modern children, and that my blouse was very low, and my neck looked most unsuitable for a Bishop's daughter.

I wonder if my neck is unsuitable, and, if so, isn't the Bishop the one to blame?

'Can you sing a hymn, child?' said my aunt.

'No, but I can say a little piece that Captain Everard taught me.'

'Can you, darling?' I said, rather frightened. I knew some of Captain Everard's 'little pieces.' 'I don't suppose your great-aunt would care for that.'

'But I should like to say it for her,' said the child obligingly. 'It's what a poor man said when he was tired on Sunday.'

At the word 'Sunday' Aunt Amelia thawed a little, so the Poppet recited,—

'To-morrow's Monday, Mrs Stout

Says she must put the washing out.

Why can't she save my scanty tin

And try and keep the washing in?

The next day's Tuesday, what a pest.

Why can't the devil let me rest?'

'That will do,' said Aunt Amelia, and rang the bell for her maid. 'Take the child away, and perhaps you could teach her a hymn, Keziah.'

'Yes, my lady,' said Keziah.

Then I tried to tell my aunt a little about my journey. 'I was so ill,' I said, 'the sea was simply awful.'

'Don't say "awful," Margaret, there's nothing awful but being in hell.'

I felt the conversation languishing. I asked if there was any news. It seemed safer to let my Aunt do all the talking, besides 'my prickles' were all out.

'I suppose,' she said, 'you've heard about your cousin, Eustace?'

'No,' I replied. 'Aunt Constance said she was in trouble, but she couldn't tell me why just then. What is it?'

'I expect she's ashamed,' said Aunt Amelia acidly. It's all her fault. Your Uncle Jasper knows the truth, at least he ought to,' but as I could not hear a word against those two beloveds, I said again,—

'Tell me about Eustace.'

'Monastery,' she said. 'Monks got hold of him and he has finally decided. I'm sorry for your uncle; there'll be no heir now, but it serves him right. He knows the truth and hasn't followed it. I look upon it as a judgment on him. Your aunt's persuaded him to let the new vicar—"priest," she calls him—put flowers in your father's old church. Candles will come next, of course; it's only the thin end of the wedge. And then your Aunt Constance talks about "union," but does she think that I would ever unite with people who have flowers and candles?'

'But,' I put in, 'father always said you needn't unite about the flowers and candles, but just in your mutual love of God.'

'Your father was always too charitable, but he's "one of the right sort," and I don't know what he'll say when he gets my last letter.'

I thought to myself he'll say, 'What a pearl you are, Amelia,' or else he'll lose his temper. Darling daddy! He'd die for the faith that is in him, but he regards his Lord's 'Judge not' as a command, consequently it is really rather pleasant to live with him.

'I think,' I remarked, getting up, 'I must go now,' so she rang for the Gidger.

'Well, and have you learned a hymn, child?'

'She's learnt four lines, m'lady,' said Keziah. 'She isn't very quick. Say them, miss.'

So the Gidger folded two small hands, shut her eyes in accordance with instructions in a way that set my teeth on edge, and chanted,—

'Go bury thy sorrow,

The world hath its share.

Go bury it deeply,

Go hide it with care.'

But anything less like a person with a sorrow that needed burial was the radiant Gidger when she opened her eyes.

'Very nice,' said Aunt Amelia, 'very suitable to these solemn times.'

'Yes, m'lady,' said Keziah.

'Look at my little cross Aunt Constance sent me,' said the Gidger, showing the small pearl thing with great pride. Aunt Amelia threw up her hands, while Keziah looked as if she'd like to.

'No one,' exclaimed my aunt 'can possibly be a Christian who wears a cross or a crucifix. If this poor ignorant child came to stay in this godly house we might begin to see some signs of grace. But of course,' she added hastily, 'I couldn't possibly have her; a child in the house would be too much for me.'

So then she pecked my cheek and gave me two incoherent tracts, one for myself, called 'The Scarlet Woman,' and one for Ross, entitled 'Do you drink, smoke, swear, or gamble?' To the poor Poppet she presented a book called Heaven or Hell? with lurid and appalling pictures of both states as they appeared to the mind of the writer. Then we drove to the hospital.

Ross was delighted with his tract, though he thought the questions 'rather intimate.' He said he should write one for Aunt Amelia, entitled 'Do you paint, powder, or wear bust-bodices?'

The Gidger had a second tea and so much flattering attention that I was afraid her head would be turned; the piece about the poor man who was tired on Sunday being received with cheers.

'What a row,' said a voice at the door, 'oh, what an awful, wicked, fiendish noise to make, you must be mad! I cannot spend my entire day coming in to ask the joke so as to tell the others. You, as usual, Captain Fotheringham, why, you're worse in bed.'

'Come in, sister,' four men shouted.

'No,' said the voice. 'I'm going out to fetch four cabs and keepers, and you're all off to Bedlam this night. Why, you're not having more tea?' she said, catching sight of a cup, and then she came right in and saw me sitting by the fire.

'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'I beg your pardon. Brown wants to know if he can do anything for you to-night,' turning to Ross.

'He can hang himself,' replied my grateful brother, 'after he's put my sister in a cab.'

'I don't want a cab,' I said. 'I'd rather wait and go in one of sister's four.'

Going home, the Gidger remarked, 'I don't think I like going to see my gweat-aunt much. Need I go any more? and I hate hymns. What is a sign of grace, muvver?'

A telegram awaited me at the hotel to say that the rooms at Fernfold are vacant, so I have wired to say we will take them from the 28th of January. Oh, when shall I get a letter from my Belovedest?

CHAPTER V

We left the Savoyard after lunch yesterday and arrived at this pretty little village in time for tea.

I suppose Uncle Jasper would say that I must get in a bit of 'background' now, but I'd so much rather be 'dim and confused.'

And is Surrey 'clear cut'? Is any county in the south of England, except perhaps Cornwall, with its spray-worn rocks and fringe of foaming sea?

This little village—you can look it up on a map if you want to. It's near a powder factory and a Pilgrim Way, and yet not so very near them! In summer it is cupped in a circle of gorse and broom, and all the country round is a soft blur of silver birches and heather. There are bits of common land and little woods with nightingales, there are cowslip fields as well, but at the moment everything is deep in snow.

Our lodgings are in a house with a nice new thatch and my sitting-room is exactly opposite one of the village pubs.

The landlady is a Mrs Tremayne—Cornish, of course—and a regular character. She has a loud voice and she shouts all her remarks at the top of it. She calls every one 'my dear,' in Cornish fashion. Her first remark was, 'Well, now, my dear, I 'ope you'll be comfortable like. You've had a 'ansome but cold day for travelling, and no mistake.' She is a dear old thing, and Nannie seems to like her.

The Gidger made a conquest of her at once. She was a nurse for many years before she married, so 'likes to hear a child about the house.'

The rooms were very clean, but bare, and in spite of a nice fire looked rather appalling and comfortless as a prospective winter residence. However, after a very sleepy Gidger had been put to bed, Nannie and I unpacked. Ross had given me a big box of flowers, and I filled all the vases and jars, and set out lots of photographs and books and cushions, and by the time dinner was ready I had transformed my sitting-room into quite a habitable place with the homey feel that books and flowers and firelight always give, while Nannie worked miracles upstairs in bedrooms.

The dinner was distinctly quaint: something funny in a pie-dish, with potatoes on the top. The top was brown. I liked that part. Nannie says I'm not to be dainty; food is very difficult just now.

At present we can only have two bedrooms and two sitting-rooms, as there are artist ladies across the passage. Their rooms are my Naboth's vineyard, as they would make such nice nurseries for the Poppet. We shall want to spread out if Ross comes.

It is so quiet here after the noise and bustle of London, but the air is lovely. It was rather an effort to be cheerful last night as I had so hoped for a letter, and I missed Ross, but the Gidger woke me this morning with 'Muvver, four letters from daddy. Oh, aren't you sleepy, darling?'

When I could get my eyes sufficiently open I found Nannie and breakfast (rather a queer one), and four precious letters from Michael arranged round the tea-pot. Of course they had missed me at the Savoyard and been re-directed. I was so pleased to get them.

I was in the middle of dressing when Mrs Tremayne brought up a wire. Telegrams give one the creeps these days, but this was from Ross to say that he was arriving by the 7.10 to-night. Nannie and I hurriedly held a council of war on the subject of bedrooms. There is a small dressing-room vacant, but it really will not do for Ross. He gets bad nights, and he must be as comfortable as possible, so Nannie and I towed all my things into the little room and made the other ready for him and coaxed the landlady for a fire. Fires seem to be difficult to obtain in this house, 'coal being such a price.'

Some of the things in my new room are very droll. There is a case of stuffed birds, and a glass ship in a bottle, lots of ribbon bows, and a hair-tidy like a balloon, made out of an electric light bulb encased in yellow crochet, with an ingenious 'basket' constructed out of a small jelly-pot covered in with yellow silk. The Gidger thought it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen, and asked for it, but Nannie said, 'Landladies don't like things moved.'

There is also a unique collection of pictures and a lot of texts, but the thing which I most love is an engraving called 'The Believer's Vision.' It is a priceless work. On a low couch, with folded hands and a smug smile of satisfaction on her depressing countenance, lies 'the Believer' fast asleep. She has a plate of grapes and oranges beside her on a table, and there seems to be a good deal of Greek drapery about as well. Up in one corner is 'The Vision'—two fat angels lying long-ways on a hole they've scooped out of the ceiling. Oh, they are fat: two to a ton, as Michael would say, and they are blowing trumpets and have heaps of feathers. It is a most entrancing work of art.

After lunch, which I think was weirder than the dinner (I hope I am not dainty) I took the Gidger for a walk and bought a lot of fruit and biscuits. Fernfold is very sweet. All Surrey is, I think, with its little woods and commons.

After tea I went down to the station, and Ross arrived, apparently in the worst of tempers; Brown was with him.

'Why, Brown,' I exclaimed, 'I didn't know you were coming.'

'Nor I, but he's not staying,' growled Ross.

'It's quite convenient,' I said, 'only there isn't a bed. I expect we could fix up something.'

'Oh, that don't matter, ma'am,' said Brown, 'don't bother about me.'

'Brown can sleep on the edge of a knife, Meg. And I hope it'll cut him,' Ross said vindictively.

'Yes, sir, thank you, sir,' said Brown, with the greatest possible deference, 'won't you get into the cab, sir? You oughtn't to stand after the journey.'

'Oh, don't fuss. If you are going to fuss,' said Ross, 'you can go to the——'

'Ross!'

'Can I never say it?'

'No,' I said severely, 'never.'

'But if I go and stay at Hindhead, surely there I——'

'Yes, but there you must say "punchbowl" after it.'

'Seems a bit complicated, Meg; how pious you've grown! What are you standing still for, Brown? Get the luggage and get a lick on you,' said my amiable relative, 'and then go back to London, don't——'

Brown had however vanished on to the platform and I followed.

'Sam,' I remarked, and somehow all the years slipped back, and he was just the jolly boy at Uncle Jasper's lodge, and I the Rector's little daughter. 'You can't go back to-night; there's no train; the last one goes at seven o'clock.'

'So the matron said, miss'—(what a wily bird, she said she'd 'work it')—'but, don't you worry, miss, I'll come up presently, it'll be all right, there ain't no call for you to worry, miss'—(there never was in Sam's view)—'we've got through worse than this,' said Sam as we got back to the cab.

'Got all the things?' asked Ross.

'Yes, sir.'

'Good-night, Brown.'

'Good-night, sir.'

'What happened about Brown?' I asked going home.

'Oh,' said Ross, as if the subject frankly bored him, 'matron sent me in a cab to Waterloo, with an orderly to get my ticket. I was sitting in my carriage, trying to turn the evening paper, when Brown said, "Allow me, sir," and then before I could swear at him, he got out into the corridor and the train went off. It was such a swot to try to find him, so there it is.'

'Oh,' I began.

'I am tired, Meg, can't think why she made me come so late; never seems much sense in women's orders.'

The first thing we did on arriving at the lodgings was to fight fiercely about bedrooms. His room looked so pleasant with flowers, a cheerful fire, a box of his favourite cigarettes, and a whole box of matches!

'Very nice,' said the invalid, 'and may I ask where you sleep?'

'Oh, I have a dear little room near by.'

'I should like to see this "dear little room near by," Meg.'

'You can't,' I said. 'It's all in a muddle and my things aren't put away.'

'I should like,' reiterated Ross, in his most maddening manner, 'to see this "dear little room near by."'

So of course he saw it. He wandered slowly round it, gazing at the works of art, until he came to 'The Believer's Vision,' which seemed to fascinate him. After a long pause in front of it he said, 'Well, it 'ud wreck my faith completely,' and then he collected an armful of my clothing and proceeded to hang it up in the other room that had been so carefully prepared for him.

'Oh, Ross, don't,' I begged. 'I much prefer the little room.'

'Why didn't you choose it at first?' he said with unanswerable logic, 'and why isn't there a fire in it?'

'I made the other room so nice for you,' I wailed, and we can't all have fires; coal is so expensive.'

'Parsons say the war has taught us many things,' said Ross, 'but I never expected it would teach you to go without a fire because it happened to be expensive. Why, it's a modern miracle, and ought to be reported to the Pope.'

'But it's difficult to get, as well.'

'Then we'll buy millions of logs and cartloads of peat,' he said. 'You're not going to sleep in this room without a fire, or any other room for the matter of that. Why, it's like an ice-house after India. Come on, Nannie, help me to get this female gear out of my dug-out. Don't be cross, old girl!'

But I was cross. I hate being called a 'female' and my clothes 'gear.' Why do I always live with cavemen who will have their own way and trample on my deepest feelings? I determined, however, that I would try again and said, 'But the mattress has such lumps and——'

'I adore lumps; how can you be so selfish, Meg?'

'But I don't want to be turned out of my room like this.'

'Well, that's what I keep on saying,' said Ross. 'How inconsistent women are. What time is dinner? Can I have a bath?'

'Just turned it on, sir,' said Brown, coming into the room and beginning to unpack!

So I left them. When Ross went downstairs I heard him call back, 'Sam, there are several things in my room that I don't want. I've left them in the middle of the floor, get rid of them.' And I wondered how Sam would carry out my brother's impossible orders, as landladies 'don't like things moved.' I peeped in as I went down. Brown was gazing at a weird assortment: all the antimacassars, some of the texts, the case of birds, and the ship in the glass bottle, the hair tidy like a balloon (which I rescued for the Gidger) and last but not least the 'Believer's Vision,' which Ross had taken off the wall and stood upside down upon the pile, in a frantic effort to save his faith from shipwreck.

I went down to dinner, and Brown waited. Liver and bacon! with that variety of mashed potato which my refined relative has from his earliest youth called 'worms.' I refused the liver and took some bacon; so did Ross, remarking that he 'Never could eat "works."'

Brown handed Ross the next course, which was rice pudding.

'Why do you bother to offer me this filth?' said Ross indignantly to Brown, 'you know I never touch it. What's the other stuff, jelly? I'll have some of that.'

'Packet,' said Brown, 'by the look of it, sir; shouldn't recommend it.'

But I, determining not to be dainty, said it looked jolly good and I would have some.

'Take it away, Brown, she's not going to eat hoofs and get a pain in her gizzard to start off with. Give her some pudding.'

Ross helped himself liberally to bread and butter and cheese.

'What funny butter,' he observed.

'Margarine, sir.'

'Oh, how tiring,' said Ross, pushing it away, 'give me a clean plate. Why can't they colour it blue?'

Coffee consisted of a jug of hot milk and some black stuff in a bottle.

We adjourned to the fire and I had quite a nice supper of hot milk and biscuits, apples, and chocolates; and we talked and talked, and got a bit levelled up with life after five years of separation.

Then I went to bed. But, oh, not to sleep. The family's appalling habit of leaving doors half open prevented that, and I heard Ross say to Brown when he came up to bed (his voice does carry so), 'What's to be done, Sam, they can't stop here?'

'Certainly not, Master Ross. Never saw such a dinner in my life, though the cooking was all right.'

'Yes, it's the stuff they cooked that's wrong. Can't you do something?' said Ross vaguely. Sam has always seemed to be able to do the things that put our muddles right.

'Well, you see, sir,' said Brown, 'it's a bit awkward; Mrs Ellsley seems to be paying very little, and food is expensive.'

'Have you ever known my sister pay very little for anything if it was possible to pay a lot?'

'No, sir, and that's what I can't understand about it.'

'But how much is she paying, then?' inquired my brother.

'Six guineas, sir.'

'But aren't there always extras in a place like this?' said Ross vaguely, searching his mind for recollections of lodgings at the sea. 'Don't they always make the profits out of—cruets, I think they call it?'

'Miss Margaret don't seem to have gone into any details,' said Brown.

'No,' agreed Ross, 'she wouldn't. But I should have thought you could feed two women and a child better than that for eighteen pounds a week. Well, they'll have to pay more, that's all.'

'But it isn't eighteen pounds,' said Brown.

'You said it was just now,' said Ross, 'six guineas each.

'But it was two guineas that was meant, sir. Six guineas for the lot of them.'

I heard my brother sink into a seat and scrape his feet along the floor, as he does when the burden of life becomes too heavy to be borne standing up.

'Do you mean to say, Sam, that the landlady proposes to provide rooms, beds, food, baths, boots, fires, cruets, and——' here Ross searched violently in his mind for more things which Mrs Tremayne was willing to provide, 'and "Believer's Visions" for two pounds a week each? Why, she's a public benefactor.'

'That's the price, sir. She said she asked six guineas and the lady agreed without arguing, as her lodgers usually do.'

'Well, of course, that's the explanation, Sam. She thought she meant "each."'

'The "she's" me,' I said to myself, to make it clearer in my mind.

'Not a doubt about it, sir,' said Sam.

'Funny things, women,' said my brother reflectively, 'never seem able to make a proper arrangement with a hotel, or book a cabin. The only mess I ever got into on a ship was when I let one of my aunts book my berth going out to—I forget where——'

'Indeed, sir,' said Brown, with interest.

'Yes, wrote and said she'd booked my berth but the ship was full and I'd have to share a cabin with a Captain Booth. Hoped I didn't mind. I loathed it, of course.'

'Of course,' said Brown.

'However, there was nothing to be done but put up with it, so I prayed it might be the Captain Booth in the 4th Lancers that I knew a bit. Where were you, Sam, that time?'

'Typhoid.'

'Oh, yes, of course. Well, I got down to the ship and turned in early, as I was dead done after—forget what I'd been doing; kept half an eye on the door to see what my stable companion was going to be like, and then Captain Booth came in.'

'Was it Captain Booth of the 4th Lancers?' asked Brown.

'Salvation Army lass,' said Ross laconically, and Brown laughed, as he used to do in Uncle Jasper's woods.

Suddenly somebody knocked violently on the wall.

'Anybody ill, do you think?' asked my brother.

'Oh, no, sir, making too much row—laughed a bit too loud, I expect, woke up the other lodgers.'

'What a rum place,' observed my brother, and then there was silence till the water ran in the bath, and the house for a few moments was turned into a pond with a polar bear in it.

Then I went to sleep.

CHAPTER VI

Brown has, apparently, been 'doing things' the last few days. Particularly nice breakfasts turn up now, a maid lights my fire and the bath water is hot. Ross informed me that he had taken on the running of the show, but that, with the best will in the world, Mrs Tremayne could not supply butter, so he'd wired to Aunt Constance for a supply, and that if I could put up with marmalade till it arrived it would ease his mind.

I have recovered my temper, too, and have decided that cavemen have their advantages. The one with whom my lot is cast at the moment knows how to stoke a fire, if nothing else. The millions of logs have begun to arrive, too, so at any rate we shall be warm. Ross says it's a pity I didn't live in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, for then I could have got really thawed on the days they lighted the burning fiery furnace.

The other occupants of the house are two maiden ladies—'artists.' Ross calls them the 'spiders,' because they entice into their parlour all their friends and acquaintances, and encourage them to buy their 'pictures,' and they borrow; oh, how they borrow! It is 'Could Mrs Ellsley kindly lend some ink?' or 'We have run out of notepaper and should be so obliged, etc.' Yesterday their newspaper hadn't come. 'Would Captain Fotheringham spare his for ten minutes?' Captain Fotheringham spared it with a very ill grace, but as the ten minutes became fifteen, and then twenty, and then thirty, he announced his intention of singing Hymn 103 outside their door.

'Why a hymn?' I inquired.

'Because it expresses in concise, lucid, clear, and unbiased language the perfectly intolerable situation which has arisen,' and he departed down the passage, singing loudly, 'My Times are in thy hand.'

Alas! this afternoon we are in deep disgrace, for the Spiders have given notice, and are going in about a week, because of us.

They object, it seems, to meeting Brown on the stairs and landings, and to the number of baths we have. Since we arrived there is never any hot water left for washing their blouses. The climax came, apparently, this morning. Brown goes into the bathroom about 7.30 a.m. and cleans the bath. I saw him do it once at home, so I know what happens. He sprinkles it all over with some powder in a tin, and then scrubs and scours it till you'd think all the enamel would come off. And then he washes it out with hot water and a brush on a long handle, and then dries it, and cleans the taps, and wipes the floor, and puts out soap and heaps of towels, turns the cold tap on and then goes along to Ross and says 'Bath's ready, sir.'

Then Ross goes and splashes it all up, and scatters soap about and swamps the floor, and then, after breakfast, Brown cleans it just the same all over again for me, only this time it's the hot tap, and Nannie comes and says 'Bath's ready, dearie, hurry up now.' What would Ross say if Brown suddenly said, 'Hurry up, now, dearie,' and if he wouldn't stand it, why do I?

Well, for some reason or other this morning Ross went along to his bath before Brown called him. He had on his new dressing-gown. His taste is lurid and flamboyant, and Aunt Constance aids and abets him. This was a really scrummy one, dull purple silk, with pink flamingoes. And Aunt Constance had had bath shoes made to match with baby flamingoes on the toes. She does spoil him abominably.

Well, Ross, resplendent in his purple and flamingoes, lounged in a chair and smoked a cigarette, while Brown put the last polish on the taps and 'chucked the towels about,' as Ross expressed it. Brown was silently absorbed in taps and Ross in watching him, when, suddenly, the door was flung wide open and a Spider entered in a red flannel dressing-gown, rather short, with a collar that had bits chewed out (I quote my brother, he means pinked) while its feet were thrust in red felt shoes. It had no cap on, but its hair was screwed into a tight, 'round button on the top,' like the panjandram, and it was in a temper hot and hissing.

Ross got up hurriedly and surveyed the apparition, feeling a little at a disadvantage, with his hair rough and with pink flamingoes. Brown stood at petrified attention by the bath.

'Oh, is it possible,' said the artist, for it was one of the sisters I told you of, 'is it humanly possible that this room is still occupied?'

'I've only just come,' my brother remarked.

'But that man has been here at least half an hour,' said the red flannel dressing-gown.

'Have you, Brown?' asked Ross.

'I've had to clean the bath, madam,' said Brown.

'But surely,' said the Spider, 'surely the bath doesn't need cleaning. I'm sure Mrs Tremayne keeps everything most beautifully. It really is absurd. It's the same in the mornings, and at night, and sometimes before dinner. The man's always in here, and I feel the time has come to put my foot down. We all pay the same, and baths are included in the price.'

So Ross, with that courtesy which he can't help showing to a woman, even if he's furious with her, said 'I'm extremely sorry, but if you will tell my man after breakfast what time it is convenient to you for me to have my bath, I will fit in with you and will speak to my sister also. See to it, Brown, will you?' and he turned away to close the conversation.

But the Spider's conversation was not so easily closed, and she was just about to begin again. However, she had bargained without Brown. Brown had his orders, he had been told to 'see to it,' and meant to. Somehow he hustled the little woman out and, with 'My master is waiting to have his bath, madam,' he closed the door on the little spitfire, and Ross exploded comfortably.

After luncheon they gave notice. 'Jolly good job, too,' says Ross. But I feel sorry we've annoyed them, though I shall go in and possess my Naboth's vineyard with great pride and pleasure.

Ross is only pretty well; he gets a good deal of pain and is sleeping badly, but he generally manages to be cheerful, when he can't he goes upstairs and stays there till the bout is over.

This evening he came into my room to say 'Good-night,' and his mind seemed full of dressing-gowns. 'Meg,' he demanded, 'is your dressing-gown red?'

'Yes,' I said, 'the one I'm using at the moment happens to be red.'

'But is it flannel?'

'No, but it's something quite as thick. Estelle thought it would be warmer for me. It's over there, if you'd like to see it.'

He picked up the soft crimson thing that Estelle had made for me when I first landed.

'Why, Meg, it looks like an evening dress.'

'Yes, but it buttons down the front, that's where the difference is.'

'Do you always button it, then, when you put it on?'

'Oh, always,' I replied, 'don't people usually?'

'I dunno,' he said, 'only this morning she had got hers sort of draped across her tummy, kept together with the belt knotted. When you walk about the passages in hotels, Meg, don't you wear a cap or something?'

'My dear child,' I observed, 'where do you think I was dragged up?'

CHAPTER VII

Fairy hands have been at work. Instead of a shining white world all is green again. There has been a very rapid thaw. The frost has gone and little brooks of melted snow are running down the lanes and paths. Tiny green spikes have appeared in all the garden as if by magic. There is even a half-drowned primrose out, telling that spring is coming very soon this year.

The morning post brought me a letter from Michael 'written in the mud.' It contains a most amazing suggestion. He asks me to try to find an old house 'such as his soul loveth' and make a home.

Oh, how he must have misunderstood my letters and thought because I frivolled and told him all our stupid jokes that I am happy. How can he imagine I could even contemplate making a home in England without him when it has been the dream of our lives to do it together. Surely he knows by now that 'Home' for me is just that particular bit of mud in Flanders in which his dear feet are embedded, and that any place without him is exile, that life, till he returns, is merely marking time. I don't care if I am talking like a little Bethel.... Ross thinks it's a topping idea. Even Nannie didn't help me. When I told her, all she said was, 'But of course you will if Master Michael wants you to.'

I felt, as I sometimes used to as a child, that 'every one's against me,' and I decided to walk my devils off.

I went downstairs and found Ross reading.

'Going out?' he asked.

'Yes, will you come?'

'No, arm's bothering,' and he took up his book again.

I went for a long tramp, down the quiet lanes and through the little spinneys, but there was no harmony—the old 'washed' feeling wouldn't come. I slipped into the Intercession Service at the little church and tried to pray for Ross and Michael and all the others. War seems very near in England, only a few miles off—those guns—that one hears sometimes in the night. I thought as I sat in church of all the death and desolation, the suffering and the broken hearts and tears. A great horror of the war came over me and a great rebellion. Why does God allow such things? How can I think of Him as a beneficent Being when the world is swamped with cruelty, blood, and separation? I feel like Tommy Vellacott. I don't love God now. I only believe in Him.

When I got home my feet were soaked and my throat sore, so I went upstairs early. I felt better in bed, and decided that I would try to find a house if it would give Michael the least scrap of happiness. If he would feel 'less anxious' about me in a house of our own instead of rooms, why a house it shall be. I grew quite excited and interested (as my feet got warmer), planning the details of our dream—an old, old house, standing in a big garden with long, low rooms full of oak furniture, seventeenth century, for choice, with lots of flowers and sunshine in the summer, and books and candlelight and glowing fires for the winter evenings. But how awful it would be if, when Michael saw it for the first time he should say,—

'This the dream house?—what a nightmare!'

Then Ross came in to say good-night. 'Better?' he queried.

'No, but I'm going to get up to-morrow,' I said defiantly.

'Are you,' he drawled, as though he hadn't the faintest interest in the subject, but there was a look in his eyes somehow I didn't like. 'Why is that wretched kitten up here again?' he said. 'I can hear it wheezing,' and he looked under the bed.

'It's me,' I said.

'It's I,' said Ross.

'Oh, have you got it, too?' (I will not be reproved for grammar by a twin).

'Are you making that noise for fun, Meg?'

'No, I can't help it,' I said crossly.

'Hadn't you better have one of those things on made out of a muslin curtain, with hot muck inside,' he added vaguely, racking his brains for medical knowledge. 'Can't think what the stuff's called.'

'No,' I said violently, 'I hadn't better!'

Presently the house grew quiet and I began to worry over Ross, his bad nights, the constant pain and the absolute refusal to let any one do anything for him; he won't have a fire and snaps Brown's head off if he suggests a doctor. He was really angry with me on Saturday because I—oh, well, it's no use worrying, I reflected, as I mopped my eyes.

Just as I was about to try to compose myself for slumber, with a little folding of the hands to sleep, wishing I could drown the kitten, Nannie came in. You will hardly believe it when I tell you that she carried in between two hot plates the thing that Ross had mentioned, in a muslin curtain.

'Master Ross says,' began Nannie.

'Nannie,' I retorted, and I was furious, 'I simply will not have that beastly thing on just because Ross says so.'

'Well,' said Nannie soothingly, 'have it because I say so, if you'd rather,' and she clapped it on.

And I decided, as she closed the door, that I should run away at dawn.

But the kitten wouldn't stop, and then I started choking. There was dead silence in the house, so I hoped that Ross was sleeping well for once, and I buried my head under the bedclothes and coughed comfortably.

I started up presently with a little shriek to find a giant in pyjamas making up my fire.

'Sorry I frightened you,' said Ross. 'What have you got your head buried for, can't you sleep?'

'No,' I replied.

'But I told you to knock if you wanted me, Meg.'

'I didn't want you,' I said crossly, 'that's why I didn't knock.'

'You're very difficult to take care of,' said Ross, surveying me from the foot of the bed.

'Not nearly so difficult as you are,' I retorted, all the worry of his continued sleepless nights coming to a head suddenly in my mind, 'you won't let me do a thing for you. I cry about you sometimes.'

'You cry about me?' said the giant, suddenly sitting on the edge of the bed.

'Yes,' and I leaned against him; he seemed a friendly sort of giant at the moment.

'When did you cry last?' he demanded.

'To-night,' and I fumbled for a handkerchief I didn't really need.

'Why?' asked the giant.

'Because your arm's so bad, you aren't sleeping, you won't take anything or do anything, or let any one else do anything for you. You're making me perfectly miserable, and as for Sam, you've been absolutely rotten to him all the week.'

'I told Brown to keep every one out of my room when I'd got a "go" on, and he let you in on Saturday.'

'Yes, but Ross,' I said, 'how could he keep me out?'

'He'd had his orders. I can't be responsible for any difficulties that may occur in the carrying of them out,' said Ross obstinately.

'You are hard,' I said.

'Scold away,' grinned Ross.

'No, but you are; you've simply looked through Brown and locked your door, and been cold to me for days.'

'Can't stand disobedience in a soldier,' said Ross, shortly, 'never could.'

'Nor in a sister, Ross?'

But there was no reply.

'Ross,' I exclaimed suddenly, desiring an armistice, 'I'm sorry. I won't come in again, only, if you knew how I worry about you, you'd let me. But,' I added, 'I thought when we embarked on this conversation, that I was rowing you.'

'I haven't said a word,' protested Ross.

'No, I know you haven't, but conscience makes the head uneasy when it wears a crown.'

'Are you feverish, darling?' said Ross anxiously.

'No, but I get quotations mixed at times. Will you forgive me?' I said childishly.

So we smoked the pipe of peace with great contentment, smoked the calumet, the peace pipe, and I said, 'My brother, listen,—

"See the smoke rise slowly, slowly,

First a single line of darkness,

Then a denser, bluer vapour,

Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,

Like the tree tops of the forest.

Ever rising, rising, rising,

Till it touched the top of heaven,"

Till it broke against the ceiling,

Till I sneezed.'

'Meg, I'm sure you're feverish.'

'I'm not.'

'Well, the only thing I've understood that you've said lately was the sneeze.'

'And that,' I observed with pride, 'was the original bit. I always felt I could be a poet if I tried. Now I'm going to finish rowing you.'

'But I thought we'd smoked the pipe of peace, Meg.'

'Oh, that——' I said.

'How like a woman. Fire away, then, and get it off your chest.'

So I fired away and got off all the wrongs of days.

'If you weren't so small,' said Ross, when at last he got a word in, 'I shouldn't feel so inclined to bully you.'

'But that's an awful thing to say. Why, you never ought to hit a man who's smaller than yourself.'

'Looks as if my moral nature is decaying and I seem to be a fair and average all-round beast,' said Ross, with gloom. 'I didn't mean to hurt you, darling. Sorry, little 'un. I'll try to be different,' he promised, as he used when he was naughty as a boy.

'Have some coffee, Meg? Brown put some in my thermy.'

'Yes. I will if you will,' and because my brother was 'trying to be different' he took a cup himself.

'Well, it's time you went to sleep,' remarked the giant, and got up to go.

Outside the door, as he went out, I heard Brown say, 'Can't you sleep, sir,' and then something about 'no dressing-gown with that cold on you.'

'Oh, dry up,' said Ross wrathfully, really trying to be different, 'you're as bad as a wet nurse. Go to bed and stop there, or I'll sack you, Sam.'

So I knew Brown was forgiven, too.

When I woke up next time it was getting light. I fumbled for my watch. It said the hour was twelve, so I knew it must be seven, or it might be eight—the hour hand will slip round, though I can always tell the minutes, which is what one usually wants to know.

Then there was a knock upon my door.

'This,' I thought, 'is my repentant brother. Now, after last night, I must remember to be firm, but kind, and so help him to be different,' and I called 'Come in.'

But an icicle in shirt sleeves entered that I'd seen several times before.

'Meg,' it said, 'you're not to get up.'

'My dear sir,' I said to it (telling myself that I was not afraid of icicles), 'I hadn't the slightest intention of doing such a thing for at least an hour.'

'Not all day,' said the icicle, and as I opened my lips, intending to be firm, but kind, it said in a voice cold as a glacier just before the dawn, 'Don't argue, it's quite settled, Margaret.'

'But,' I objected, assuring myself again that firm kindness was the only way with icicles, 'you've got exactly the same cold, and you're up. Sauce for a goose ought to be sauce for a gander.'

Suddenly a rapid thaw set in and the icicle subsided into a mere puddle on the floor, and my brother answered, 'Sauce from a goose is all I know about,' and there we left it.

CHAPTER VIII

It took two days to drown that kitten, but now I'm up again and out, and to-day I went to Tarnley, with the permission of my gracious keeper, 'if I drove both there and back.' As it was sunny, and mercies are strictly rationed just at present, I accepted the offer and went to all the places I had meant to go to first, did a lot of shopping, and finally interviewed one of the house agents.

I was quite clear and definite in my requirements—I wanted to buy an old house; so of course every one he sent me to was red brick, modern, and to let.

I went home and groused to Ross, and announced that the only really satisfactory way to find a suitable dwelling was to walk the length and breadth of England, and when you saw the house you wanted knock at the door and beguile the owner into selling it to you, and that I intended to adopt this plan and to begin my pilgrimage shortly.

Ross, as usual, was rude about it.

'Haven't you discovered all these years, you little ass, that agents are a race apart?' said he; 'their minds are controlled by the law of opposites. Now your heart, Meg, is set on a house, ancient and mellowed with years, with long, low rooms and beams, and an old-world garden full of wallflowers, phlox and herbs and perennials and——'

'But, Ross——'

'Don't interrupt me, Meg; consequently you must tell the agent that you desire a new up-to-date dwelling with a small garden overlooked on either side (since we are cheerful souls and love the company of our fellows). Then they would give you orders to view old houses with little latticed windows and winding stairs. Methinks if you said you must have lincrusta and white enamel you might even get oak panelling.'

After dinner Ross departed upstairs, said he had things to do and then he was going to bed.

To bed? To walk his room all night, with Brown, unbeknown to my brother, pacing up and down the passage.

I sat by my fire and read. At one o'clock, Ross knocked me up. As I went into the corridor Brown barred his door.

'I daren't, ma'am. Please don't ask me. Not after last time, miss.'

'Let her in, Brown,' cried Ross. 'I knocked her up, you ass! Worrying?' he asked me laconically as I went in.

'Yes.'

'Like to make tea then? got such a rotten "go" on, Meg.'

And then he fainted, and I called to Brown. He got his master into bed, while I flew round for brandy.

'Give me some water,' said my reviving brother.

'No, I won't,' said Brown, 'you'll take the brandy, Master Ross, or I'll thrash you like I did that day in Hickley Woods when you fell and cut your knee and sprained your ankle, and tried to prevent me going for the doctor.'

Ross was so dumbfounded that he took the brandy meekly.

'Now these aspirins,' said Brown, 'and I'm going to light the fire. The room is like an ice-house. I'm about fed up.'

When he arose from the fireplace he was once again the suave, impassive servant. 'I should wish to give a month's warning, sir. I don't seem able to give you satisfaction.' And there was a desolating silence. 'Anything more I can do for you to-night, sir?'

'Yes,' said Ross, 'stop playing the goat.'

But Brown's face remained hard and impassive.

'Want me to eat humble pie, I suppose,' said Ross, and surveyed his servant as if he had just suddenly seen him.

'Yes, sir, I think it would be a good thing.'

'Well, then, I've been a devil all the week.'

But Brown still waited.

'Want more pie?' asked my erring brother.

'That's as you feel, sir,' said Brown.

So Ross, with the air of a man who thought it a pity to spoil the ship of repentance for a ha'porth of grace, said 'Sorry.'

'Don't name it, sir,' said Brown, and I so rejoiced over the sinner that repented that I forgot to remind him to say 'punchbowl.'

Just as Brown went through the door, Ross called out, 'Got another place, Sam?'

Sam suddenly came to life again. 'Will you see the doctor in the morning?'

'Oh, have it your own way,' growled Ross.

'Then I've got a place,' said Sam.

'Get us some tea, then,' my brother ordered, 'and come and have a cup yourself.'

'Certainly not, sir, with Miss Meg—Margaret, I mean,' he said, getting deeper into the mire.

'Do you usually call my sister by her Christian name?'

'No, sir, but you worry me so, I don't know half the time what I'm a-saying.'

'Well, I'm a-saying now,' said his autocratic master, 'that it's time the tea was here, and bring three cups. I want to talk about the Hickley Woods. You've got a rotten temper, Sam.'

'Yes, sir, you can't touch pitch,' said Sam, firing the last shot.

So victory is not always to the strong.

'Oh, what a chap,' said Ross.

We spent a warm and pleasant hour talking birds, and fish, and rabbits, and the years slipped away and we were back again in the Hickley Woods—Ross, Miss Meg, and Sam.

After Brown had departed with the tea-cups, Ross said, 'Meg, do you think I'm weak?'

'Well, darling,' I replied, 'you are sure to feel so after fainting, but if you take care, you——'

'But I don't mean my body, Meg.'

'We are all sinners,' I said, 'but if you would like to see a clergyman in the morning, I'll——'

'How can you be so aggravating; I don't mean my soul, either. I want to talk about my Will.'

'I thought you had made it ages ago, but I'll wire for the lawyer in the morning.'

'Oh, Meg, how you do exasperate a chap.'

'Well, what do you mean?' I giggled.

'I mean my will power. Do you think I'm weak?'

'About as weak as Michael,' I replied. 'Why?'

'Because,' said my brother seriously, 'doesn't it seem an awful thing that a chap my size can't manage a chap his.'

'But there's only three inches between you, and he is six months older.'

'Yes, but three inches is three inches, and what's six months, Meg?'

'You say forty minutes is enough when you boss me.'

'Oh, twins are different, but with Brown I get along all right when I take my stand on the King's Regulations. But when he brings in the Hickley Woods I go to water.'

'No, to brandy.'

'Oh, rub it in,' said Ross, and then because he was so quaint and sweet and I loved him, and he had fainted, and because the lion seemed very tame, I forebore to tease him further and was really nice, kissed him once and petted him a little, and then when I got up to go he said,—

'Pity you aren't always as dutiful as that.'

'Dutiful!' I shrieked. 'Oh, what a word,' and so we parted coldly after all.