t, Di, I won't have you
playing tricks with Eagle March. I simply won't stand it!"

"It's horrid of you to suggest that I would do such a thing," Diana
protested virtuously.

"Pooh!" said I, secure in my knowledge that she dared not move. "I know
you pretty well, Di, and although you can be quite a darling when you
like, you'd do anything--_anything whatever_, that was for your own
interests, no matter how much it hurt others. You'd better tell me the
truth, because I'm sure to find out; and if you mean to hurt or deceive
Eagle March I'll stop you from doing it, I don't care how much it may
cost me or you, or any one else but him."

"If ever there was a thorough little _pig_, it's you, Peggy," said Di.

"Thorough pigs seem to run in our family," I ruthlessly retorted. "But
they're intelligent animals, and this one has rooted up something
already. I believe you've practically promised to marry _both_ these
men, and persuaded them to keep the secret, so you can have time to
decide which one will be the better to take, in the end."

"You make me out a perfect wretch," Di moaned piteously, peering over
her shoulder to see how the repairs were getting on.

"So you are! A beautiful one, but a wretch. You like them both, Eagle
and Major Vandyke. You like Eagle because he's so popular and such a
hero as an airman; and you like Major Vandyke because he's awfully good
looking and awfully rich and an awful flirt. You were worried to death
for fear he wouldn't propose, and I'd have known to-night, from the
change in your face, even if you hadn't told me, that he had spoken at
last. But Eagle spoke, too, and you sent him away happy. I know that;
though the only other thing I do know for certain, is that you think now
he's sure to get his aunt's money."

"It's not such a tremendous lot, anyhow," Di gave herself away again.
"He won't have more than two or three hundred thousand dollars at the
most. If only it were _pounds_! Every one says Sidney Vandyke has a
million. He's one of the few very rich men in the American army."

"But he can't fly, and he can't invent things, and he'll never be the
man in any career that Eagle will," I reminded her. "You know this as
well as I do. That's why you're waiting. Don't you think you'd better
explain your true state of mind to me, if you don't want me to work
against you?"

"You're a cat as well as a pig, you little horror!"

"What a museum combination! Don't twitch, or the fringe will