course it's no business of mine and I'm sure I hope you are very
happy."

"Perfectly happy," said T. X. complacently. "You must come out and see
me one Saturday afternoon when I am digging the potatoes. I am a perfect
devil when they let me loose in the vegetable garden."

"Shall we go on?" she said.

He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he thought
she was vexed with him at his fooling.

"I haven't made you cross, have I?" he asked.

"Oh no," she replied.

"I mean you don't believe all this rot about my being married and that
sort of thing?"

"I'm not interested," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, "not very
much. You've been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I
wasn't grateful. Of course, I don't care whether you're married or not,
it's nothing to do with me, is it?"

"Naturally it isn't," he replied. "I suppose you aren't married by any
chance?"

"Married," she repeated bitterly; "why, you will make my fourth!"

She had hardy got the words out of her mouth before she realized her
terrible error. A second later she was in his arms and he was kissing
her to the scandal of one aged park keeper, one small and dirty-faced
little boy and a moulting duck who seemed to sneer at the proceedings
which he watched through a yellow and malignant eye.

"Belinda Mary," said T. X. at parting, "you have got to give up your
little country establishment, wherever it may be and come back to the
discomforts of Portman Place. Oh, I know you can't come back yet. That
'somebody' is there, and I can pretty well guess who it is."

"Who?" she challenged.

"I rather fancy your mother has come back," he suggested.

A look of scorn dawned into her pretty face.

"Good lord, Tommy!" she said in disgust, "you don't think I should keep
mother in the suburbs without her telling the world all about it!"

"You're an undutiful little beggar," he said.

They had reached the Horse Guards at Whitehall and he was saying
good-bye to her.

"If it comes to a matter of duty," she answered, "perhaps you will do
your duty and hold up the traffic for me and let me cross this road."

"My dear girl," he protested, "hold up the traffic?"

"Of course," she said indignantly, "you're a policeman."

"Only when I am in uniform," he said hastily, and piloted her across the
road.

It was a new man who returned to the gloomy office in Whitehall. A man
with a heart that swelled and throbbed with the pride