they owed to the company of the third, the
party was to separate.

For in Amaryllis, sleep, Dick's care and Mrs. Brundage's wardrobe had
worked transformation. From the dust and mud on the thick little shoes,
up over five visible inches of coarse grey stocking to clumsy amplitude
of washed-out, pink-striped cotton skirt, and thence by severity of
blue-linen blouse to the face lurking in the pale lavender of the
quilted sun-bonnet, the eye met nothing which was not proper to the
country-girl, dressed a little older, when the tail of hair swung to her
body's movement, than her sixteen years required.

If the face was not so ruddy as a moorland girl's should be, and if the
mark of the "smutty finger" beneath each eye suggested, out of Ireland,
ill health--well, sickness and recovery are not restricted to the town,
and the bright eyes, when the lids would lift, gave promise of returning
health.

Dick matched her well.

With the cut cheek decently washed, the face shaved with Tom Brundage's
worst razor, and a patch of flour congealing the blood of his wound, he
looked very different from the ruffian who had disturbed, so short a
while since, the lunch of the Brundage chickens. For his brown boots,
brushed to the semblance of a shine, brown gaiters of the army cut,
green cord riding-breeches which had delighted the heart of Tom Brundage
until petrol prevailed over horseflesh and drove him into black; a
striped waistcoat, of the old-fashioned waspish, horsey favour, partly
buttoned over a grey army shirt and loosely covered by his own Norfolk
jacket, with a knotted bandanna in place of collar, made of him an odd,
but wholly credible nondescript of the lower sporting world.

Men on the roads of that joyous Saturday might have asked was it
whippets, horses, or the ring which best explained this lank, keen-eyed,
humorous-lipped, uneven-gaited fellow; but none would have suspected a
masquerade in the figure offered to their eyes with an assurance so
entirely devoid of self-consciousness.

Yet to Amaryllis it was perhaps the raffish green imitation-velours
Homburg hat which did most to alter Dick Bellamy's aspect; so that she
would wait for a glance of his eyes to assure herself that this was
indeed her wonderful friend and champion, and no new man nor changed
spirit.

But Pepe, its one honest and unpretentious person, had made the whole
trio bizarre and incredible.

For though, on one word from Dick, Amaryllis had given