rs and proprietorship been comical. She
seemed bent on extracting from Percy public and frequent demonstration
of his lover-like side, and her appeals and endearments had furiously
embarrassed him. They went home early, met callers at their own door,
and were kept up late. That Mrs. Cranston should have turned and looked
inquiringly into Agatha Loomis's face the instant the door closed upon
them was to be expected. Her eyes were sparkling, her lips twitching
with the mental ebullition going on within; but Agatha turned abruptly
away. Mrs. Cranston then sought to search her husband's face, but the
captain was forearmed and chose to keep his back towards his better half
and to pull on his arctics and overcoat and gather up his little
hurricane lamp. The trumpet was sounding first call for tattoo, and
though it was no concern of his, for Mr. Sanders, his cheery subaltern,
had just gone whistling by on his way to the troop quarters, Cranston
preferred to face the falling snow rather than those speaking, luminous,
quizzical, questioning, tormenting eyes, and so invented business for
the occasion. "Don't sit up for me, Meg," said he, and she knew he
simply would not be drawn into a discussion.

But she had to talk to somebody, and what was Agatha for? Agatha had
palpably dodged and gone to her room, and would have been glad not to
come down again. She even went into the boys' room and romped with her
two young trooper cousins instead of allowing them to go to sleep. So up
came Mrs. Cranston and ordered her out, and then, when the girl would
have escaped and gone down-stairs again, Margaret confronted her in the
hall, placed her hands on her shoulders, and with a world of mingled
merriment and commiseration in her tone said, or rather asked,--

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What do you think now?"

"Simply what I have maintained all along. That he did right."

"But what do you think of--of her?"

And Miss Loomis, shaking herself free, hurried by her friend and down
the stairs. She refused to say.

Perhaps it might have been better had Mr. Davies postponed his first
marital lecture. It was very gentle, very brief, but Almira had seen his
vexation as they hastened home and had striven to avert the coming
comments. She well knew wherein she had erred. Public endearments of any
kind by word or touch had already been pointed out to her as
unconventional in society. There were no people on the post in whose
presence he more drea