Perhaps I do now--in a way. I don't know."

"I bet you'll settle down there after the war, just as though nothing
had happened."

"I wonder," said Doggie.

"Of course you will. Do you remember our plans for the reconstruction
of Denby Hall, which were knocked on the head? All that'll have to be
gone into again."

"That doesn't mean that we need curl ourselves up there for ever like
caterpillars in a cabbage."

She arched her eyebrows. "What would you like to do?"

"I think I'll want to go round and round the world till I'm dizzy."

At this amazing pronouncement from Marmaduke Trevor, Peggy gasped. It
also astonished Doggie himself. He had not progressed so far on the
road to self-emancipation as to dream of a rupture of his engagement.
His marriage was as much a decree of destiny as had been his
enlistment when he walked to Peter Pan's statue in Kensington Gardens.
But the war had made the prospect a distant one. In the vague future
he would marry and settle down. But now Peggy brought it into alarming
nearness, thereby causing him considerable agitation. To go back to
vegetation in Durdlebury, even with so desirable a companion cabbage
as Peggy, just when he was beginning to conjecture what there might be
of joy and thrill in life--the thought dismayed him; and the sudden
dismay found expression in his rhetorical outburst.

"Oh, if you want to travel for a year or two, I'm all for it," cried
Peggy. "I can't say I've seen much of the world. But we'll soon get
sick of it, and yearn for home. There'll be lots of things to do.
We'll take up our position as county people--no more of the stuffy old
women you're so down on--and you'll get into Parliament and sit on
committees, and so on, and altogether we'll have a topping time."

Doggie had an odd sensation that a stranger spoke through Peggy's
familiar lips. Well, perhaps, not a stranger, but a half-forgotten
dead and gone acquaintance.

"Don't you think the war will change things--if it hasn't changed them
already?"

"Not a bit," Peggy replied. "Dad's always talking learnedly about
social reconstruction, whatever that means. But if people have got
money and position and all that sort of thing, who's going to take it
away from them? You don't suppose we're all going to turn socialists
and pool the wealth of the country, and everybody's going to live in a
garden-city and wear sandals and eat nuts?"

"Of course not," said Doggie.

"Well, how are people like o