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"Never in my life," said his indolent pose of lazy conHughie. "Look here," he tentment was gone, and for added, inspired by a sudden a moment challenge peeped hope, "perhaps it would be out of his steely eyes. She as well if I stayed at home rose deliberately from on Tuesday night-eh?" grass, and walked with great stateliness back to the croquetlawn.

"Quite as well," said Miss Gaymer candidly. "But I don't suppose Mildred will let you off. You'll be wanted by the wallflowers.'

"But not by Joey, apparently."

"I don't dance with rotters," said Miss Gaymer elegantly. "I am practically booked up already, too. However, if you apply at once I might give you one." She thought for a moment. "I'll try you with Number Eight."

"We had better not settle at present," said Hughie. "I should like to have a look round the ballroom before I tie myself down in any way. But I'll bear your application in mind."

Miss Joan Gaymer turned and regarded her companion with unfeigned astonishment. He was still sprawling, but

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had emptied their glasses and gone to bed. There had been a "ladies' night," accompanied by fearsome games (of a character detrimental to the table) between sides captained by Joey and another damsel; and even after Mildred Leroy had swept her charges upstairs, there had been bear-fighting and much shrieking in the passages and up the staircase. Then the younger gentlemen had returned, rumpled but victorious, to quench their thirst and listen with respectful deference to any tale that the great Marrable might care to unfold. (The story of the Orinoco had gone round, though it had mercifully escaped the notice of the halfpenny papers.)

But Hughie had not been communicative, though he had proved an eager and appreciative listener to 'Varsity gossip and athletic "shop." shop." So the young men, having talked themselves to a standstill, had gradually faded away, highly gratified to find the great man not only willing but eager to listen to their meticulous chronicles; and Hughie and D'Arcy and Leroy, their symposium reduced to companionable limits, had compared notes and "swapped lies," as the Americans say, far into the night.

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been a trifle sudden. Last night he had driven up to the door of Manors a masterless man, a superior vagabond, an irresponsible freelance, with hundreds of acquaintances and never a friend. In twenty-four hours this sense of irresponsible detachment had gone for ever, and the spell of English homelife had sunk deep into his being. He felt for the first time that he was more than a mere unit in the Universe. He had turned from something into somebody. He realised that he had a stake in the country-the county-the little estate of Manors itself; and a great desire was upon him to settle down and surround himself with everything that is conveyed to an Englishman here and abroad - especially abroad-by the word Home.

Then there were the people with whom he had come in contact that day. They were nearly all old friends, but they were old friends with new faces. There was Mildred Leroy, for instance. He had half expected his relations with that young matron, the past considered, to be of a slightly tender and sentimental nature. Far from it. Her attitude to him was simply maternal-as, indeed, it had been, had he realised the fact, from the very beginning of their friendship. A woman always feels motherly towards a man of her own age, and rightly, for she is much older than he is. Occasionally she mistakes this motherly feeling for something else, and marries him- but not often.

Obviously Mildred Leroy now regarded Hughie as nothing more than an eligible young débutant, the chaperon's natural prey, to be rounded up and paired off with all possible despatch.

Then there was Joey. Twentyfour hours ago he had had no particular views on the subject of his ward, beyond

(1) The reflection that he would probably find her "rather a bore;"

(2) An idle speculation as to whether, if expediency should demand it, he would be able to bring himself to marry her.

Well, twenty-four hours is a

long time. He saw now quite clearly that whatever Miss Gaymer's shortcomings might be, a tendency to bore her companions was not one of them; and that if ever the other question should arise, the difficulty would lie, not in bringing himself to marry Joey, but in bringing Joey to marry

him.

Like a sensible man he decided to let things work themselves out in their own way, and went to bed. There he dreamed that Joey, attired in a blue kimono and red slippers, was teaching him to dance the Two Step to a tune played by the engines of the Orinoco.

(To be continued.)

THE TRUMPETER.

THE Trumpeter had not got a trumpet, nor could he indeed have sounded it if he had. In point of fact, he was not a trumpeter at all. In recognition of good and plucky service rendered at a time of life when the rising generation seldom enjoys a chance of playing the man, he had, as soon as it was practicable under the rules of the service, to wit, on his reaching the age of eighteen years, been created bombardier. He had arrived in the subcontinent a year and a half before, a small and rather delicate-looking fair-haired lad; but he had speedily proved himself to possess a heart of well over regulation - size in rough-and-tumble times on the Tugela, and open-air life in the saddle had built up a well-knit frame around the heart. So that, when the Column-Commander brought him along with him from a far-off portion of the theatre of war to act as his orderly in Cape Colony, he had developed into a tough and wiry, light-weight soldier, insensible to danger, with a pretty seat on a horse such as is not acquired in the riding school, and with a fairly serviceable command of language for one so young.

Essentially a man-or perhaps one should rather say, a boy-of action, intelligent, fearless, and resourceful, he was useful in any capacity, but organisation was perhaps his forte. He possessed that quality

so invaluable in an administrator, the faculty of always getting what he wanted. He was not one of the sort who take "no" for an answer readily. He would cajole the most cantankerous warrantofficer in the Army Ordnance Department into disgorging treasures, the presence of which in the store was known only to the initiated. He knew how to extract a Cape-cart load of compressed fodder out of a quartermaster - sergeant who five minutes before had assured a brigadier-general that there was not a bale within seventy miles. Had he been in Ladysmith and not outside of it, he would assuredly have emerged from the ordeal as plump as the proverbial partridge. When the Column - Commander took him with him to Cape Town for an outing he made it plain that, although he appreciated the fresh breezes and sunlit surf of Seapoint, the Mount Nelson was in his opinion the proper place for personages so prominent as they were to honour with their patronage. And if he was thwarted he was always conciliatory, well knowing that he would get his own. way in the end.

Except for the space of a few weeks, he rode a little, pulling, chestnut mare. He could only hold her with difficulty when all was peaceful, and he could not hold her at all when bullets were on the wing, for she loved the scent of

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battle almost as much as her rider did. But when dangers thickened, when the enemy was coming on, and when the Trumpeter, a look of sublime purpose on his face, dismounted and with his arm through the bridle got his carbine to his cheek, and when the two of them thereupon began to waltz round and round each other, she mad for a gallop and he intent only on discharging his weapon in some direction or other provided that he did not hit the mare-well, the Column staff, throwing all regard for appearances to the winds and a prey merely to the over-mastering instinct of selfpreservation, used to go to ground and hope that he would get his round off quickly and have done with it.

How he came to change his charger for a season was after this wise. The Column was on one occasion returning to the railway line to "refit," and only a short march had therefore been left for the last day for it to reach its destination. On getting in early in the forenoon, the Column-Commander forthwith headed for the Remount Depôt to pick up what was to be had there, taking the Trumpeter with him. Now, every soldier of experience is aware that the proper course to pursue in the service is to always demand double what you want, because there is at least a sporting chance of your getting half of what you ask for. The Column needed sixty horses to make it up, and its chief contemplated presenting an ultimatum to the effect that

he could not possibly get on with less than one hundred and twenty; but when his eyes were gladdened by the spectacle of well-stocked lines in the depôt he grew grasping, and he made up his mind then and there to insist upon a hundred and fifty as a sine qua non. For if he got, say, eighty, there would be a reserve which would assuredly come in useful before long.

The Remount Officer was at one end of his lines. He was arrayed in a pink shirt and chocolate-coloured creations by Tautz; his crimson face did not go well with the pink shirt. He had in his hand a hunting crop which looked as if it had come out of the Ark, and the intelligence which he had to impart turned the heart of the Column - Commander to stone. "Awfully sorry, Colonel," he exclaimed cheerily, "but you've drawn blank this time. Fact is-General French was here yesterday. He planted himself in front of me with his feet a little apart, and he wagged his stick at me to emphasise his remarks till, 'pon my word, I thought I was going to get the jimjams,-it was not what he said so much as the way he said it. On no account whatever am I to allow one single remount to go out of the lines till General D is filled up; old D

is due to-morrow, and says he wants ninety. After that P's Column is to have its little lot a hundred and ten he has the assurance to ask for; he makes me tired, P does. Honour bright, I

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