, open.
'What sort are they?'

He laughed and answered--'War Loan Lozengers.'

XIV

AUNT PURDIE INTERVENES

The battalion was not an hour returned from the longest, hottest,
dustiest and most exhausting route march yet experienced.
Macgregor was stretched on his bed, a newspaper over his face, when
an orderly shook him and shoved a visiting card into his hand.

'She's waitin' ootside,' he said and, with a laugh, departed.

Macgregor rubbed his eyes and read:

MRS. ROBERT PURDIE.
13, _King's Mansions, W_ _3rd Wednesday._

'Oh, criffens!' he groaned. 'Ma aunt!' And proceeded with more
haste than alacrity to tidy himself, while wondering what on earth
she had come for.

Willie, scenting profit in a rich relation, though not his own,
proffered his company, which was rather curtly refused.
Nevertheless, he followed his friend.

Macgregor joined his aunt in the blazing sunshine. Her greeting
was kindly if patronizing.

'Sorry to keep ye waitin', Aunt Purdie,' he said respectfully. 'If
I had kent ye was comin'----'

'I understood a good soldier was always prepared for any
emergency----'

'Excep' when he's aff duty, mistress.' This from Willie, who had
taken up his position a little way behind Macgregor, an
ingratiating grin on his countenance.

Aunt Purdie drew up her tall, gaunt, richly-clad figure and
examined Private Thomson through eye-glasses on a long
tortoise-shell handle.

'Macgregor, who is this gentleman?'

'It's jist Wullie Thomson,' said Macgregor, annoyed but reluctant
to hurt his friend's feelings. 'D'ye no mind him?'

'I have a very exclusive memory for faces. . . Dear me, he is
going away!'

It was so. Either the glasses, or being called a gentleman, or
both, had been too much even for Willie.

'Is the colonel in the vicinity?' Aunt Purdie demanded, recalling
Macgregor's wondering gaze from the retreating figure.

'I couldna say. He's liker to be in a cauld bath.'

'You have, of course, informed him who your uncle is?'

'Me an' the colonel ha'ena done much hob-nobbin' as yet,' Macgregor
said, smiling.

'His mother used to obtain her groceries from your uncle. If you
could have presented the colonel to me--well, never mind. I
presume the major is on the _quee vive_.'

'He'll be ha'ein' a wash an' brush up, I wud say.'

'But why are you not being drilled or digging up trenches or firing
guns----'

'We're a' deid men this efternune. Had a big ro