I think if Sidney Vandyke had never taken the trouble actually to hate me, he exerted himself to that extent on his wedding day.

I kept my distance when the others gave the bride and bridegroom a send-off of waving hands and showering rice as they skimmed away in the Grayles-Grice car (ready at last); but I'd caught a wandering glance or two meanwhile from my new brother-in-law, and thanked my stars that Heaven hadn't made me some poor private soldier under his command. Di turned her cheek with the look of a martyred saint when I was supposed to kiss her good-bye; and altogether I fancied that I should not be urged to visit in Park Lane when the happy pair came back in the autumn. I intended to be at Ballyconal then; but a thousand things were fated to change my scheme and the schemes of all the other unsuspecting mice in England and Europe.

The first thing—oh, such a small thing compared to those that were to follow—which happened after Di's marriage was an announcement from Father. He had proposed to Mrs. Main, and she had been "good enough to accept him." That was his formal way of breaking the news to me, for we had been on official terms only for some days following the wedding; though to his darling Di he would probably have put it "Look here, girl, she's jumped at me! Hurrah! The luck of Ballyconal's come right side up again!" And Di would have congratulated dear old Bally, reminding him that third times were always successful.

Of course, whenever I stopped to think of it, I had told myself that this announcement was bound to come, and to come soon. But my head had been full as a hive of bees with other thoughts; and besides, I hadn't realized how I should feel the blow when it fell.

Vaguely, I'd taken it for granted that life would go on for me as before. I liked Kitty, and she didn't dislike me, though, of course, Di had been brilliantly her favourite. I had told myself that Kitty and Father would trot off somewhere and leave me free at Ballyconal to hibernate in some neglected corner, while the place was glorified into a stately British home for an American millionairess. Then (I had gone on dimly planning) they would return in state, and Kitty would be duly honoured by a picturesque welcome from the hastily cleaned up tenants. After that, nobody would take much notice of little Peggy. I should be tacitly permitted to play among my books, and the peasants I loved the best, for whose sake I had been trying to learn the art of nursing.

Father's way of telling his news, however, showed me the truth about myself. I didn't feel in the least related to him; and I decided to use the month before their return from the wedding journey in finding some other way of spending my life. I couldn't make a "crowd" in that "company" of two!

I was nice to Father and charming to Kitty, and all the time I was polishing my brain as if it were the genie's lamp, and summoning the genie to bring me inspiration. I couldn't be a governess on the strength of languages alone. Not knowing the multiplication table, having to do hasty sums on my fingers, and being ignorant of principal rivers, boundaries, and all dates except that of Waterloo, was too big a handicap; and in sheer poverty of invention I seemed to be driven back to Billiken, that god of "things as they ought to be." Perhaps it was fate that I had been invited by Mrs. Dalziel to a "boy and girl" theatre party the very night when I had to congratulate Father, and wish wishes for Kitty which short of a miracle couldn't come true.

It was only two days after Di's wedding, but already that event seemed long ago. No news had come from Eagle, and he was referred to in London newspapers as "the modest stranger" who had disappeared after saving the lives of the bride and bridegroom, "leaving no trace except a little blood shed in their service." The dinner at the Savoy and the boy and girl party at the theatre afterward were given, no doubt, more in honour of "Milly's count" (who was starting for Petrograd next morning) than for me; but I was made to feel myself a guest of importance; and at the St. James I had Tony next to me. There had been no chance to pour out my news at dinner, but now it came and I seized it instantly. Tony was always nice and sympathetic to tell things to! He actually listened and seemed interested, which I've noticed that few people do except in their own affairs. But the next minute I was sorry I'd spoken, for he proposed again immediately. I might have known he would! "You see, your whole family's bound to marry Americans, so I might as well be the one for you," he said. "If you don't take me, Mrs. Main will produce a nephew of hers. I know him—poisonous blighter—and he'll be shoved down your throat, sure as fate. He's some homelier than me, if possible."

I laughed. "Dear Tony! You're much too good to be a refuge for the destitute."

"Depends on the destitute," said he. "I'd love to be a sort of asylum or young ladies' home for you. Do take me this time, and have done with it once and for all."

"It wouldn't be done with," I reminded him. "That's the worst of it."

"It might be the best of it, if I played my cards right. You know, Peggy, not very long ago as the bird of time flies, you said you liked me better than any other fellow. Has my stock gone down, or stands it where it did?"

"Where it did, or even a point or two higher," I assured him. "But, dear Tony, I'm afraid even that isn't high enough for—for marriage, and fearfully serious things like that, though lovely for a dance or the theatre. Besides, I didn't say exactly what you think I said."

"About liking me better than other men? Oh, I know you made one exception. 'Tisn't jolly likely I'd forget! But you said the One Exception didn't count. I haven't forgotten that either. He looked on you as his sister or his maiden aunt."

"Oh, not his maiden aunt!" I moaned. "I could bear anything but that. And—and I'm afraid, after all, he does count—just in my mind, you know, not in any other way. But he's there and I can't—can't put him out. I'm afraid I don't want to."

"Gee! That's a bad prospect for me," said Tony with a big sigh, luckily not audible over the orchestra which was loudly playing between acts "You made me love you, I didn't want to do it!" with variations. "But see here, Peggy, it's just the same with me about you. I can't put you out of my mind, and I don't mean to. There you are! What are we going to do about this? Your best man won't come and play in your backyard, and my best girl won't put her nose in mine. You'll always be my best girl, because you're the best girl there is. So here's an idea: suppose I don't ask to be best with you, and don't whine to be on the ground floor or anything conceited? Couldn't you spare me a third-story back bedroom in your heart's house? Just sort of lend it to me, you know. I'd promise to turn out if you couldn't get along with me as a boarder when you've given me a fair trial. Of course, though, dear, I don't want to nag at you if there's a grain of chance that the best man—the real tenant of the house—will ever come to his right senses!"

"His right senses!" I almost laughed. "Why, Tony, for him to like me—in that way—would be to lose them. You don't know who he is."

Tony was silent.

"Or—do you? Have you been guessing?"

"Mayn't have guessed right," grumbled Billiken evasively. And then I knew that he knew the poor little secret I had thought to keep.

"I think you have guessed right," I said. "Don't look as if you were afraid you'd hurt me. You haven't. I don't much mind your knowing. And that's the greatest compliment I could pay you. It's Eagle March, of course."

With that the orchestra stopped dead as if on purpose to eavesdrop, and I had made a present of the name to the whole audience. But luckily that was all I had given. Any girl may yell any man's name, just as any cat may look at any king. All the same my cheeks were hot throughout the next act, during which I pretended to be passionately absorbed in the play. The minute it was over and forced silence at an end, Tony boldly said, "I knew it must be March, all the time. Not that you showed it!" he hurried to add. "You're too good plucked an infant for that! And I'm sure he never twigged. Not he! He's not that kind. It was only because you saw a lot of him, that I thought so; and a girl who wouldn't fall head over ears in love with March, if he was always underfoot, wouldn't have wit enough to know which side her bread was buttered. See?"

I laughed again more than before, for Tony when he meant to be intensely serious was generally funny. "Poor me!" I said. "There was no butter on my bread, nor any jam. I'm a fool to go on eating it bare and stale! Imagine a man who loved Di anticlimaxing over to me!"

"I can't imagine any man not beginning and ending with you," said Tony stoutly, and I shouldn't have been a human girl if his loyal admiration hadn't pleased me. "But I suppose you're a better judge of March than I am," he went on, "and so, if his name's not down on the programme, won't you write mine there—to be figurative again? Scribble it in pencil if you like, not in ink. Then you can easily rub it out if you get tired of seeing it always under your eyes."

"What do you mean?" I asked, really puzzled by his allegories.

"Why, be engaged to me on the instalment plan. Stop payment whenever you want to. Agreement to be drawn up that way. All these weeks you've been trying, according to promise, haven't you, to like me enough to be engaged? Now, instead, try being engaged, and see whether you can like me enough to strike a fast bargain by and by. You might come along to Belgium with mater and Milly and me—they're dying to have you. Milly wants to bore you talking about her Russian—and we'll see such a lot of each other, travelling, that you'll know your own mind by the time my leave's up. Think, if I could take you back to God's own country with me as my—no, I won't say the word. I see it shocks you."

"It does," I said. "And even if I did what you ask, which would be nice for me, but not fair to you, nothing would induce me to—to——"

"Marry?"

"Yes, so soon. I'm too—young. Unless I loved you perfectly. Then I'd marry you if I were eight instead of eighteen."

"I wouldn't marry you! Must draw the line somewhere. But if you really think it would be nice, why not do it? I think it's fair, and I'm the judge. Say yes, quick, before that darned orchestra stops again. You shan't be married till you like, even if I have to wait as long as Jacob did for Rachel. Not that I know how long that was. Say yes——"

"Yes, then!" I shouted over an appalling blast of instruments. And Tony squeezed my hand.

That is how I happened to start for Belgium with Mrs. Dalziel and Milly, the day after Father's quiet wedding with Kitty Main, and the day before Austria delivered her ultimatum to Servia.