. She would love doing it; she loved
life and people, Ethel Bruce-Drummond, and she was able therefore to put
life and people, warm and living, on to her pages. She was as fit and
hardy as a splendid boy, her cheeks round and ruddy, her eyes bright,
her fine bare hands brown and strong, her sturdy ankles sturdier than
ever in her heavy knitted woolen hose and her stout Scotch brogues. He
had known and counted on her for almost twenty years--and he had married
Mildred Carmody. "Ethel," he said, suddenly, "in that book of mine I
mean to have----"

"Ah, yes, that book of yours, Stephen! Slothful creature! You know quite
well you'll never do it."

"Never do it! Why,"--he was indignant--"I've got tons of it done
already, in my head! It only wants writing down."

"Yes, yes," said his friend, penitently, "I make no doubt. It only wants
writing down. Well?"

"I'm going to have a chapter on friendship, and insert a really novel
idea. Friendship has never been properly praised,--begging pardon in
passing of Mr. Emerson and his ilk. I'm going to suggest that it be
given dignity and weight by having licenses and ceremonies, just as
marriage has. It has a better right, you know, really. It's a much saner
and more probable vow--to remain friends all one's life, than in love.
In genuine friendship there is indeed no variableness, neither shadow or
turning. You and I, now, might quite safely have taken out our
friendship license and plighted our troth,--twenty years, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Miss Bruce-Drummond, gently, "it's twenty years, Stephen,
and that's a quite beautiful idea. You must surely put it in your book,
old dear." Her keen eyes, looking away across the ancient battlefields
were a little less keen than usual, but Stephen Lorimer did not notice
that because he was looking at his watch.

"Do you know it's nearly five, woman, and Mildred waiting tea for us at
the Stirling Arms?" So he called to the boy and girl and fell into step
beside his friend and swung down the hill to his tea and his wife, a
little thrilled still, as he always would be to the day of his death, at
being with her again after even the least considerable absence.

It seemed to Honor Carmody that three solid summers had been welded
together for her soul's discipline that year; there were assuredly
ninety-three endless days in July. She was not quite sure whether having
Carter with them made it harder for her or easier. He was an
accomplished travele