e...."

"Lucky for 'em they refrained from expressin' their opinions!" She felt
his great muscles swell as the big hand tightened on her waist. "Though,
mind you, there have been times when for your own sake, by Jingo! I'd have
given all I was worth to have you a bit more like other women----"

"Who weren't dying to dabble in Diplomacy and win distinction as War
Correspondents. Who funk raw-head and bloody bones"--she shook with a
nervous giggle--"and all that sort of thing.... Would it please you to
know that the plumes of my panache of ambition have been cut to the last
quill--that henceforth my sole aim is to rival the domestic Partlet,
clucking of barnyard matters in the discreet retirement of the coop?"

"You've said as much before!" he objected.

"But now I mean it! Put me to the test. Let the house in Wilton
Place--we'll live at Wrynche Rodelands, if you think you won't be bored?"

He bellowed joyously!

"Me bored! With ten thousand acres arable and wood and moorland to farm
and preserve and shoot over, two first-class packs meetin' within a
fifty-mile radius of my doorstep, the Committee of the local Polo
Association shriekin' for a President, and the whole County beggin' me
with tears in its eyes to take the hint a Certain Person dropped when he
gave me my C.B., and accept the Crown Commission as Lord-Lieutenant!
'Bored'--I like that!"

"If you would like it, be it!" she flashed. "Trust me to back you up. I
can and I will! I'll help you entertain the military authorities and their
women, keep the Rolls, sit on the Bench when you weigh in as Chief
Magistrate, and prompt you when you get into a hat. I'll be all things to
one man--and you shall be the man! Only"--she laughed hysterically, her
face hidden against his big shoulder--"I don't quite know how far these
things are compatible with my new role!"

"Of domestic Henny-Penny cluckin' in the Home Coop." His big hand patted
her almost paternally. "Leave cluckin' to hens with families. Do you
suppose I'm such a pachydermatous ass that I can't understand that home is
a make-believe to a real woman, when--when there isn't even one chicken to
tuck under her wing! Worse luck for me and you!"

She laughed wildly, lifting her wet, flushed face up to him. Her black
eyes were shining through the tears that rose and brimmed over and fell.

"If I told you that the luck had changed, would that make you happy?"

He cried out with a great oath:

"Yes, by G----!"