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Rh “I wouldn’t get impatient, Mark,” he said gently. “There’s a lot of time for a boy under twenty. Since things have worked so well for you thus far, I’d be content to believe they were going to work out right in the end.”

“I’ll try,” said Mark. “I get sort of raging; then I’m ashamed of it.” And Win noticed that Mary, usually so quick to try to comfort every one’s anxieties, did not raise her eyes nor speak.

Mark left his friends at the gate, and Mary and Win went around to the side door, and whistled up the back stairs, fulfilling their contract. Jane and Florimel came down to join them, looking more ruffled in spirit than when they had gone up. Jane was white to the lips, and her short upper lip would quiver and draw; her eyes had hollows under them and they had retreated into her head in a way they had, as if to conceal their colour, as well as expression, when they were sorrowful. Florimel, on the contrary, was dark crimson in cheeks and brilliant eyed; she looked like an embodied young electrical storm.

“I won’t kiss him and call him father, not if he is the king!” Florimel declared, stopping short at the door, and nearly upsetting Mary’s