in your heart's house? Just sort of lend it to me, you know. I'd promise
to turn out if you couldn't get along with me as a boarder when you've
given me a fair trial. Of course, though, dear, I don't want to nag at
you if there's a grain of chance that the best man--the real tenant of
the house--will ever come to his right senses!"

"His right senses!" I almost laughed. "Why, Tony, for him to like me--in
_that_ way--would be to lose them. You don't know who he is."

Tony was silent.

"Or--_do_ you? Have you been guessing?"

"Mayn't have guessed right," grumbled Billiken evasively. And then I
knew that he knew the poor little secret I had thought to keep.

"I think you have guessed right," I said. "Don't look as if you were
afraid you'd hurt me. You haven't. I don't much mind your knowing. And
that's the greatest compliment I could pay you. It's Eagle March, of
course."

With that the orchestra stopped dead as if on purpose to eavesdrop, and
I had made a present of the name to the whole audience. But luckily that
was all I had given. Any girl may yell any man's name, just as any cat
may look at any king. All the same my cheeks were hot throughout the
next act, during which I pretended to be passionately absorbed in the
play. The minute it was over and forced silence at an end, Tony boldly
said, "I knew it must be March, all the time. Not that you showed it!"
he hurried to add. "You're too good plucked an infant for that! And I'm
sure he never twigged. Not he! He's not that kind. It was only because
you saw a lot of him, that I thought so; and a girl who wouldn't fall
head over ears in love with March, if he was always underfoot, wouldn't
have wit enough to know which side her bread was buttered. See?"

I laughed again more than before, for Tony when he meant to be intensely
serious was generally funny. "Poor me!" I said. "There was no butter on
my bread, nor any jam. I'm a fool to go on eating it bare and stale!
Imagine a man who loved Di anticlimaxing over to me!"

"I can't imagine any man not beginning and ending with you," said Tony
stoutly, and I shouldn't have been a human girl if his loyal admiration
hadn't pleased me. "But I suppose you're a better judge of March than I
am," he went on, "and so, if his name's not down on the programme, won't
you write mine there--to be figurative again? Scribble it in pencil if
you like, not in ink. Then you can easily rub it out if you get tired of
seeing it always unde