and for a lengthy while. "And then there were three!" said Gilbert,
when Ninian told them of his appointment. "Three little clever boys," he
went on, "going up to fame. One little clever boy got married and then
there were two!..."

Until they could make some settlement of their future, they decided to
live in a boarding house in Russell Square.

"We shall loathe it," Gilbert said, "but that will be good for us!"

8

And then Roger and Rachel got married. They walked into a Registrar's
office, with Gilbert and Ninian and Henry to bear them company, and
made their declarations of fealty to each other.

"My father would have been horrified," Roger said at luncheon
afterwards. "If he'd been alive, Rachel, we'd have had to get married in
a church!"

Rachel smiled. "I shouldn't have minded, Roger!" she answered. "You'll
laugh, I know, when I tell you that half-way through the service I began
to long for a surplice and the Voice that Breathed O'er Eden. A marriage
in a church is a lot prettier than one in a Registrar's office!..."

"If only the Mayor of the Borough had performed the ceremony," Gilbert
lamented. "In his nice furry red robes and cocked hat, joining you two
together in the name of the Borough of Holborn, he 'd have looked rather
jolly! Roger, we ought to get the Improved Tories to consider the
question of Civil Marriage. We want more beauty in it. Rachel, my dear,
I haven't kissed you yet. I look upon myself as Roger's best man, and I
ought to kiss you!"

"Very well, Gilbert," she answered, turning her face towards him.

"You've deceived us all, Rachel," he said as he kissed her. "We'd made
up our minds to hate you because you were taking our little Roger from
us, and at first we thought we were right to hate you because you were
so aggressive to us, but you've deceived us. We don't hate you. We like
you, Rachel!"

"Do you, Gilbert?" She turned to Ninian and Henry. "Do you like me,
too?" she said.

"I shouldn't mind marrying you myself," Ninian replied.

"I don't see why Gilbert should get all the kisses," said Henry. "After
all, I more or less gave you away, didn't I? I was there anyhow!...."

So she kissed Ninian and Henry too. Then, a little later, Roger and she
went off to spend a honeymoon in Normandy.

9

"I feel horribly lonely somehow," said Gilbert to Henry. Ninian, in a
hurry to catch the train for Boveyhayne at Waterloo, had left them at
Charing Cross.

Henry nodded his head.