the great injustice. At ten minutes to eleven I was making up my mind
that, after all, sleep would be the best consolation, when our
lodging-house landlady knocked.

We had the "drawing-room floor," up one flight of stairs from the
street. Luckily I was still in the draw-dining-room--a fantastic
apartment crowded with nouveau-art furniture all out of drawing, like
daddy longlegs--when the woman tapped and peeped in. If I had gone
upstairs to my own top-floor room, I'm sure, being a prim person, she
would have considered it improper to summon me down, and I should have
missed a heavenly half hour.

"A gentleman has called, Miss, and could he come up for five minutes?
The name is Captain March."

It was true! It was he! And he hadn't even met Diana yet. She had been
dancing. But the hostess had introduced him to Father, and Captain March
had worked round to the subject of me. When he heard that I was "too
young for balls," he just slipped out, took a taxi, and made a dash to
Chapel Street to tell me he was sorry. I was so grateful, I could have
cried more than ever. It seemed to me one of the very nicest things a
man ever did. He was in full-dress uniform, because an American officer
is on his native heath when he's at his own Embassy; and I thought that
he looked adorable in uniform.

He stayed half an hour instead of five minutes, and then said he must go
back, and "do the right thing." The right thing, which he didn't
particularly want to do, was to dance with the girls who weren't booked
up to the eyes, and--to meet my sister. It was my first triumph to have
a man--and such a man--put me in front of Diana. I was thrilled by it,
though I ought to have had sense enough to know what would happen.

Eagle March (he told me that night to call him Eagle) did go back to the
ball, and did meet Diana. I heard about it next morning when I took in
her breakfast: how he had asked Father if he might be introduced, and Di
had liked him so much that she found a dance to give him, although
everything was engaged by the time he arrived; how an American girl who
knew him at home said that he had a rich aunt who might leave him "a
whole heap of money" some day (the aunt of the lace, I said to myself);
and how Father had consented to take Diana and me to Hendon, to see
Captain March's monoplane in its hangar.

"I managed that for you, dear, to make up for your disappointment last
night, and because you're really a good, useful littl