he quarrel she had not been
on speaking terms.

"This is in Marmaduke's handwriting. You recognize it. Just read the
top line when I've folded it. 'I have enlisted in the 10th Wessex.'
See?" She withdrew the letter. "Now, what could a man, let alone an
honourable gentleman, do more? Say you're sorry for having said
beastly things about him."

Nancy, who had regretted the loss of a lifelong friendship, professed
her sorrow.

"The least you can do then, is to go round and spread the news, and
say you've seen the letter with your own eyes."

To several others, on a triumphant round of visits, did she show the
vindicating sentence. Any soft young fool, she asserted, with the
directness and not unattractive truculence of her generation, can get
a commission and muddle through, but it took a man to enlist as a
private soldier.

"Everybody recognizes now, darling," said the reconciled Nancy a few
days later, "that Doggie is a top-hole, splendid chap. But I think I
ought to tell you that you're boring Durdlebury stiff."

Peggy laughed. It was good to be engaged to a man no longer under a
cloud.

"It will all come right, dear old thing," she wrote to Doggie. "It's a
cinch, as the Americans say. You'll soon get used to it--especially if
you can realize what it means to me. 'Saving face' has been an awful
business. Now it's all over. Of course, I'll accept the two-seater.
I've had lessons in driving since you went away--I had thoughts of
going out to France to drive Y.M.C.A. cars, but that's off for the
present. I'll love the two-seater. Swank won't be the word. But 'a
parting gift' is all rot. The engagement stands and all Durdlebury
knows it..." and so on, and so on. She set herself out, honestly,
loyally, to be the kindest girl in the world to Doggie. Mrs. Conover
happened to come into the drawing-room just as she was licking the
stamp. She thumped it on the envelope with her palm and, looking round
from the writing-desk against the wall, showed her mother a flushed
and smiling face.

"If anybody says I'm not good--the goodest thing the cathedral has
turned out for half a dozen centuries--I'll tear her horrid eyes out
from their sockets!"

"My dear!" cried her horrified mother.

* * * * *

Doggie kept the letter unopened in his tunic pocket until he could
find solitude in which to read it. After morning parade he wandered to
the deserted trench at the end of the camp, where the stu