particularly,"
he admitted. "You told me you always took these five dogs out for a walk
directly after breakfast, and for the rest I used my intelligence."

"I might have gone into Regent's Park or St. James' Park," she reminded
him.

"In which case," he observed, "I should have walked up and down until I
had had enough of it, and then gone away in a bad temper."

"Don't be foolish," she laughed. "I decline absolutely to believe that
you had a single thought of me when you turned in here. Do you mind if I
say that I prefer not to believe it?"

He accepted the reproof gracefully.

"Well, since we do happen to have met," he suggested, "might I walk with
you a little way? You see," he went on, "it's rather dull hobbling along
here all alone."

"Of course you may, if you like," she assented, glancing sympathetically
at his stick. "How is your leg getting on?"

"It's better--getting on finely. So far as my leg is concerned, I
believe I shall be fit to go out again within ten days. It's my arm that
bothers me a little. One of the nerves, the doctor said, must be wrong.
I can only just lift it. You've no idea," he went on, "how a game leg
and a trussed-up arm interfere with the little round of one's
daily life. I can't ride, can't play golf or billiards, and for an
unintelligent chap like me," he wound up with a sigh, "there aren't a
great many other ways of passing the time."

"Why do you call yourself unintelligent?" she protested. "You couldn't
have got through your soldiering so well if you had been."

"Oh! I know all the soldier stuff," he admitted, "know my job, that is
to say, all right, and of course I am moderately good at languages, but
that finishes me. I haven't any brains like your friend Thomson, for
instance."

"Major Thomson is very clever, I believe," she said a little coldly.

"And a little censorious, I am afraid," Granet added with a slight
grimace. "I suppose he thinks I am a garrulous sort of ass but I really
can't see why he needed to go for your brother last night just because
he was gratifying a very reasonable curiosity on my part. It isn't
as though I wasn't in the Service. The Army and the Navy are the same
thing, any way, and we are always glad to give a Navy man a hint as to
how we are getting on."

"I really couldn't quite understand Major Thomson myself," she agreed.

"May I ask--do you mind?" he began,--"have you been engaged to him
long?"

She looked away for a moment. Her to