ge. And now I'm off down to the
ducks. Say I've got a headache and don't let 'em come round and try to
fetch me. So long, Irene; you've been some pal to me through this and I
shall never forget."

Whereupon Tootles went off to lend the unloquacious Burrell a helping
hand, and Irene ran up to the bedroom to dress.

From the pompous veranda of the Hosack place Gilbert Palgrave, sick
with jealousy, watched Joan swimming out to the barrels with that
cursed boy in tow. And he, too, had made up his mind to play his last
card that night.

Man and woman and love,--the old, inevitable story.

IX

The personnel of the Hosacks' house party had changed.

Mrs. Noel d'Oyly had led her little husband away to Newport to stay
with Mrs. Henry Vanderdyke, where were Beatrix and Pelham Franklin,
with a bouncing baby boy, the apple of Mr. Vanderdyke's eye. Enid
Ouchterlony had left for Gloucester, Massachusetts, where her aunt,
Mrs. Horace Pallant, entertained in an almost royal fashion and was
eager to set her match-making arts to work on behalf of her only
unmarried niece. Enid had gone to the very edge of well-bred lengths to
land Courtney Millet, but Scots ancestry and an incurable habit of
talking sensibly and rather well had handicapped her efforts. She had
confided to Primrose with a sudden burst of uncharacteristic incaution
that she seemed doomed to become an old man's darling. Her last words
to the sympathetic Primrose were, "Oh, Prim, Prim, pray that you may
never become intellectual. It will kill all your chances." Miss Hosack
was, however, perfectly safe.

Milwood, fired by a speech at the Harvard Club by Major General Leonard
Wood, had scratched all his pleasant engagements for the summer, and
was at Plattsburg learning for the first time, at the camp which will
some day occupy an inspiring chapter in the history of the United
States, the full meaning of the words "duty" and "discipline." Their
places had been taken by Major and Mrs. Barnet Thatcher and dog, Regina
Waterhouse and Vincent Barclay, a young English officer invalided out
of the Royal Flying Corps after bringing down eight German machines. A
cork leg provided him with constant amusement. He had a good deal of
property in Canada and was making his way to Toronto by easy stages. A
cheery fellow, cut off from all his cherished sports but free from even
the suggestion of grousing. Of his own individual stunts, as he called
them, he gave no details and