rom the group and relieve the strain. Reward came to crown their
efforts in strange, unlooked-for fashion. Hoofs, wheels and flashing
lights were again at the entrance gate, even as Mrs. Frank, sparkling
with animation, distributing her gay good humor over the silent
semicircle, suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, if I'd _only_ known you were here, I
could have provided the one thing to make our reunion complete! If we
were not going on at daybreak I should do it yet." Then hoofs and wheels
and lights had come to a stop at the front of the house, and in measured,
martial tread a man's footsteps were heard upon the _lanai_. Then, all of
a sudden, with a cry of joy, Witchie burst in again: "_Should_ do it?--I
shall do it! Said I not I was the fairy queen? Behold me summon my
subjects from the ends of the obedient earth!" And, waving her parasol as
she would a wand, gayly pirouetting as she had that night in the tent at
old Camp Merritt, she danced forward: "Sound ye the trumpets, slaves!
Hail to the chief! See the conquering hero comes! Enter Brevet
Brigadier-General Stanley Armstrong!--though his arm is anything but
strong."

Bowing gravely to the sprite in front of him, vaguely to the group in the
shaded light at the edge of the _lanai_, and joyously to the little
hostess, as almost hysterically she sprang forward and clasped his hands,
the colonel of the Primeval Dudes stood revealed before them.

"_Colonel_ Armstrong! How--when did you get here? What does this mean? Is
your arm quite well again? Why _didn't_ you let us know you were coming?"
were the questions rained upon him by Mrs. Marsden, immediately followed
by the somewhat illogical statement that she was actually breathless with
surprise.

"Shall I answer in their order?" said he, smiling down at her flushed and
joyous face. "By the Sedgwick. This afternoon. That I wished to see you.
Doing quite well. Because I didn't know myself until two days before we
sailed." Then, as he stood peering beyond her, she would have turned him
to her other guests had not Mrs. Garrison made instant and impulsive rush
upon him.

"As fairy queen or fairy godmother I claim first speech," she gayly
cried. "What tidings of my liege lord, and where is hers, my fairy
sister's?" she demanded, waving in front of him her filmy parasol and
pirouetting with almost girlish grace.

"Captain Garrison was looking fairly well the day I sailed," he answered
briefly; "and Colonel Frost left for Hongkong