hat," he said. He extended his cuff and added
the words "Vitally Important" to what he had just written. "It was
probably that which decided her."

"Well, I hate dogs," said Eustace Hignett querulously. "I remember
Wilhelmina once getting quite annoyed with me because I refused to step
in and separate a couple of the brutes, absolute strangers to me, who
were fighting in the street. I reminded her that we were all fighters
nowadays, that life itself was in a sense a fight; but she wouldn't be
reasonable about it. She said that Sir Galahad would have done it like a
shot. I thought not. We have no evidence whatsoever that Sir Galahad was
ever called upon to do anything half as dangerous. And, anyway, he wore
armour. Give me a suit of mail, reaching well down over the ankles, and
I will willingly intervene in a hundred dog fights. But in thin flannel
trousers, no!"

Sam rose. His heart was light. He had never, of course, supposed that
the girl was anything but perfect; but it was nice to find his high
opinion of her corroborated by one who had no reason to exhibit her in a
favourable light. He understood her point of view and sympathised with
it. An idealist, how could she trust herself to Eustace Hignett? How
could she be content with a craven who, instead of scouring the world in
the quest for deeds of derring-do, had fallen down so lamentably on his
first assignment? There was a specious attractiveness about poor old
Eustace which might conceivably win a girl's heart for a time; he wrote
poetry, talked well, and had a nice singing voice; but, as a partner for
life ... well, he simply wouldn't do. That was all there was to it. He
simply didn't add up right. The man a girl like Wilhelmina Bennett
required for a husband was somebody entirely different ... somebody,
felt Samuel Marlowe, much more like Samuel Marlowe.

Swelled almost to bursting point with these reflections, he went on deck
to join the ante-luncheon promenade. He saw Billie almost at once. She
had put on one of those nice sacky sport-coats which so enhance feminine
charms, and was striding along the deck with the breeze playing in her
vivid hair like the female equivalent of a Viking. Beside her walked
young Mr. Bream Mortimer.

Sam had been feeling a good deal of a fellow already, but at the sight
of her welcoming smile his self-esteem almost caused him to explode.
What magic there is in a girl's smile! It is the raisin which, dropped
in the yeast of ma