I am sorry, Mrs. Bryce, but I must ask you to be more explicit."

"Explicit? I send my daughter away in your charge and you bring her back
engaged to some unknown poilu. Then you ask me to be explicit!"

"But I know nothing of this affair, Mrs. Bryce. It is as much a surprise
to me as it is to you."

Mrs. Bryce turned an exasperated look to the girl.

"It's true," said Isabelle, "she doesn't know anything about it."

"But how could you get engaged to him without her knowing it? She could
see him around, couldn't she?"

"But he wasn't around. We met no Frenchman in Bermuda," protested Miss
Watts, utterly at sea.

"Will you kindly explain this mystery?" inquired Mrs. Bryce, hotly.

"Yes, if you'll keep your temper and let me. In the first place, I'm not
engaged to him."

"He says you are practically engaged and that you love him," contributed
Wally.

"But I've never seen him."

"What?"--in chorus from both parents.

"It's true."

"You'd better have a look at him," said Wally, going, to the window.

Isabelle followed him hastily. A man in French uniform gazed up at the
windows.

"_Is_ that Jean Jacques?" inquired Isabelle with interest. "He isn't bad
looking, is he?"

"He patrols the block day and night. But get ahead with the plot. What
hold has he got on you?"

"None," said she, promptly. "I merely adopted him as my son."

"Are you crazy?" inquired her mother.

Even Miss Watts looked alarmed.

"No, I'm a patriot. Down at Bermuda I met a girl I knew at school, Agnes
Pollock. She told me about being patriotic, and how she wrote cheerful
letters to soldiers in the trenches. So I borrowed two from her, Jean
and Edouard. I wrote them nice motherly letters, about keeping their
feet dry----"

Wally burst into laughter, but Mrs. Bryce hushed him with a violent
gesture.

"They called me '_Ma chere marraine_,' and wrote long letters back. It
was splendid practice for my French," she added.

"But this man wouldn't be wanting to marry his '_chere marraine_',"
challenged Mrs. Bryce.

"No. He wrote rather warm letters from the first, but Agnes and I
decided that he had a warm, appreciative nature."

"Little fools! Then what?"

"I wrote a very cooling letter, but it didn't work. He was worse than
ever; he said he knew I was beautiful and young; that he loved me
madly--wanted to ask Wally for my hand in marriage, and a lot of stuff
like that."

"And you accepted him?--this man you've never seen?"