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ded, really more interested in the sprightly hoyden he was talking to than in the subject of their conversation. "I see," he said. "If that's the way you figure it out, I shall be aware of Mr. Travers Nugent when I meet him at the club. If he's a dark horse he might rook me at billiards or bridge. I am obliged to you for this warning, Miss Mallory. You have probably saved an unsophisticated sailor from premature ruin and a suicide's grave." Enid glanced up at him, her eyes dancing with mischief. "Bother Mr. Nugent!" she exclaimed. "Now that you have addressed me with proper respect, you may call me Pussy again if you wish--till you misbehave again." So for the next half-hour they reverted to earlier nomenclature, and forgot to play at quarrelling as they wandered up and down by the summer sea. And when at length they parted, Enid to go home to pour out tea for her blind mother, and Reggie to enter the club, they lightly made an appointment which was to have its grim bearing on the tale that has yet to be told. "Look here, Miss Mallory," said the Lieutenant, with feigned solemnity. "I have to go into Exeter to-morrow to try on some new uniforms, and to-night I must stay at home and help the mater entertain a wretched curate whom she has invited to dinner. But I shall be at large to-morrow evening. What about a prowl along the shore or up the marsh? We might renew hostilities, and get some sort of a notion which of us is really right in the matter of our Christian names. I may change my mind, and come to the conclusion that you are, after all." "Oh, may you, indeed, Reggie?" replied the girl, and with a roguish laugh she ran away without saying whether or no she would meet him. But he was familiar with his former playmate's impish ways, and it was in sublime confidence that the appointment would be kept that he loitered about on the seafront on the evening of the following day. Sure enough, a little after nine, when the sunset glow still lingered in the western sky, Miss Enid's white-clad figure was seen threading its way through the loungers on the parade. It was a beautiful evening, and the junior section of residents and visitors were about in plenty. Young men and maidens, hatless and in evening dress, strolled up and down the asphalte side-walk between the coastguard station and the club, for the most part chattering of the handicaps in the forthcoming tennis tournament, while some few exceptions, too busy
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