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 they're both at Rock Island now. It's all right with Alice, Dave; Myra wired me."

"What's all right?"

"For me to bring you. So you'll come with me, Old Top! You'll stand up with me. You won't throw me down now."

Dave looked at Lan and forgot everything else for the moment. Lan's "now" meant not only now when he was being married, at last, but now when he was going away to war. Dave thought of Lan at work in Serbia; he pictured Lan working under fire and in pestilence; not with the greatest skill perhaps, but with no idea of sparing his short, stubborn self. Dave promised: "You bet I won't throw you down."

"That's good," Lan accepted immediately. "That's great! That's settled, then. That makes everything all right. I'll wire Myra. You'll stay at her home, of course."

Then Dave remembered Fidelia and that this invitation could not include her; but with the thought was memory of the night when she had brought him word, from Evanston, that Lan was to be married and he had felt badly, and she had, because she thought that Lan, on account of her, meant to ignore him. He wanted to tell her how it really was.

"Fidelia'll understand," asserted Lan. "I'll wire now."

"I'll call her first," David said; and immediately, with Lan there, he did so.

Fidelia insisted that David go; she urged him to go on the afternoon train with Lan. "Of course you'll go, David," she said, "I'm just glad about it. You