sitatingly
extended his hand. "No pinchin'!"

Charlie Dixon laughed. The heartiness of his grip was notorious among
his friends.

"I'm far too glad to see you to want to hurt you, Uncle Joe," he said.

"Uncle Joe!" exclaimed Bindle in surprise, "Uncle Joe!"

"I told him to, Uncle Joe," explained Millie. "You see," she added
with a wise air of possession, "you belong to us both now."

"Wot-o!" remarked Bindle. "Goin'-goin' gone, an' cheap at 'alf the
price. 'Ere, no you don't!" By a dexterous dive he anticipated Charlie
Dixon's move towards the ticket-window. A moment later he returned
with three white tickets.

"Oh, Uncle Joe!" cried Millie in awe, "you've booked first-class."

"We're a first-class party to-night, ain't we, Charlie?" was Bindle's
only comment.

As the two lovers walked up the stairs leading to the up-platform,
Bindle found it difficult to recognise in Sergeant Charles Dixon the
youth Millie had introduced to him two years previously at the cinema.

"Wonder wot 'Earty thinks of 'im now?" muttered Bindle. "Filled out,
'e 'as. Wonderful wot the army can do for a feller," he continued,
regretfully thinking of the "various veins" that had debarred him from
the life of a soldier.

"Well, Millikins!" he cried, as they stood waiting for the train, "an'
wot d'you think of 'is Nibs?"

"I think he's lovely, Uncle Joe!" said Millie, blushing and nestling
closer to her lover.

"Not much chance for your ole uncle now, eh?" There was a note of
simulated regret in Bindle's voice.

"Oh, Uncle Joe!" she cried, releasing Charlie Dixon's arm to clasp
with both hands that of Bindle. "Oh, Uncle Joe!" There was entreaty in
her look and distress in her voice. "You don't think that, do you,
_reeeeeally_!"

Bindle's reassurances were interrupted by the arrival of the train.
Millie became very silent, as if awed by the unaccustomed splendour of
travelling in a first-class compartment with a first-class ticket. She
had with her the two heroes of her Valhalla and, woman-like, she was
content to worship in silence. As Bindle and Charlie Dixon discussed
the war, she glanced from one to the other, then with a slight
contraction of her eyes, she sighed her happiness.

To Millie Hearty the world that evening had become transformed into a
place of roses and of honey. If life held a thorn, she was not
conscious of it. For her there was no yesterday, and there would be no
to-morrow.

"My! ain't we a little mouse!" cri