gotten your cap. Miss Bright,--oh, she's
gone."

Just the same Mabel! But he wasn't going to let her be the same! He had
made up his mind to that as he had come along with eager strides from
the station. She turned to him and they exchanged their greetings and he
went on, pursuing his resolution, "Look here, I've got a tremendous
idea. When I get through this cadet business I shall have quite a bit of
leave _and_ my Sam Browne belt. I thought we'd go up to town and stick
up at an hotel--the Savoy or somewhere--and have no end of a bust.
Theatres and all the rest of it. Shall we?"

That chilly, vexed manner of hers, caused as he well knew by the uproar
of his arrival, disappeared. "Oh, I'd love to. Yes, do let's. Now you
want a bath, don't you? I'm annoyed there was all that disturbance just
when I was meeting you. I've been having a little trouble lately--"

"Oh, well, never mind that now, Mabel. Come and watch me struggle out of
this pack. Yes, look here, as soon as ever I know for certain when the
course ends we'll write for rooms at the Savoy. I hear you have to do it
weeks ahead. We'll spend pots of money and have no end of a time."

She reflected his good spirits. Ripping! He splashed and wallowed in the
bath, singing lustily one of the songs out there:

"Ho, ho, ho, it's a lovely war!"

VI

But the three days at home were not to go on this singing note. They
were marred by the discovery that his suspicion was well founded; she
_was_ bullying Effie. He began to notice it at once. Effie, with whom he
had anticipated a lot of fun, was different: not nearly so bright;
subdued; her eyes, not always, but only by occasional flashes, sparkling
that intense appreciation of the oddities of life that had so much
attracted him in her. Yes, dash it, Mabel was treating her in a rotten
way. Bullying. No, it was not exactly bullying, it was snubbing, a
certain acid quality always present in Mabel's voice when she addressed
her,--that and a manner of always being what he thought of as "at her."
The girl seemed to have an astonishing number of quite trivial duties to
perform--trivial; there certainly was no suggestion of her being imposed
upon as he had always felt Miss Bypass up at the vicarage was imposed
upon, but Mabel was perpetually and acidly "at her" over one trivial
thing or another. It was forever, "Miss Bright, I think you ought to be
in the morning room, oughtn't you?" "Miss Bright, I really must ask you
not t