the bugles sounding reveille; then presently the beat of drums and the
rumble of the field guns going to the station. When Captain Kilburn
announced that the entrainment was well under way, we started in his big
limousine, shivering a little in evening cloaks flung on hastily over
low-necked dresses. We waited till the platform was clear of the great
mass of khaki-clad young men, and then timidly appeared, to stare
through the dusk of early morning in search of friends. Ours wasn't the
only party engaged in that business. Others were there; and swathed
figures of girls and women, in rich-coloured cloaks over pale-tinted
ball gowns, glimmered in the dawn like a row of tall flowers crowding
along the edge of a garden path. My eyes were trying to find Eagle March
when Tony Dalziel spoke by my shoulder, and made me jump. "I've just a
minute," he said when I turned. "I want to ask you if you'll forget you
turned me down last night, and be friends again. I will if you will.
_Will_ you?"

"Yes," I returned gladly, shaking hands. "I'm so glad you've realized
that you were silly to feel about me like that. Why you or any man
_should_, I can't think!"

"Can't you? That's because you haven't seen yourself, or heard yourself,
and don't know what a quaint, darling sort of girl you are. But never
mind. Let it go at that. We'll be friends. And promise, if my mother and
Milly ask you to do something for them, you will."

"Anything I possibly can," I warmly answered. "Good-bye! Good luck!"

He was off. I meant to follow him with my eyes and wave to him when he
looked out of his window in the train. But before he appeared again, I
caught sight of Eagle March on a car platform, and forgot Tony, just as
Eagle had forgotten me. Behind Eagle's slight figure towered massively
Major Vandyke's splendid bulk; and as I waved my handkerchief to Eagle,
while the train slid slowly out, I was vaguely aware of Diana's
outstretched arm and a butterfly flutter of something white and small.
Eagle's eyes went past me to her, though his smile was for me also; and
Di was able deftly to kill her two birds with one stone, at the last.
Her farewell look and gesture did equally well for both, yet each could
take it wholly to himself.

CHAPTER VII

The next night I had a dreadful dream about Eagle March. Somehow or
other, he had been condemned to death by Major Vandyke (who had
unbecomingly turned into a judge) and Eagle was to be executed unless I