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 brought anything but sunshine and sweetness into the house. Your merriment has kept care away from us whenever he tried to show his nose … Why my dear what is it? There! You mustn't cry!" As he spoke he had taken out a folded silk pocket-handkerchief and was very tenderly wiping her eyes. Judy went on sobbing a little at moments:

"I have always tried to make happiness, and I have never troubled you with asking favours, have I?"

"No need to ask, Judy. All I have is yours just as it is Sally's or Joy's." Suddenly she smiled, her eyes still gleaming with recent tears:

"I am asking a favour now—by way of a change. Lucius on my honour—and I know no greater oath with you than that—this has been a perfectly harmless piece of fun. It arose from a remark of that nice Irish stewardess on the Cryptic that no one was good enough to marry Joy except one man: the young nobleman whom she had nursed. And she really came to believe that it would come off. She says she has some sort of foreknowledge of things." The Colonel smiled:

"Granted all this, my dear; what is it you want me to do?"

"To do nothing!" she answered quickly. Then she went with some hesitation:

"Lucius you are so determined when you take up an idea, and I know you are not pleased with this little joke. You are mixing it up with honour—the honour that you fight about; and if you go on, it may cause pain to us all. We are only a pack of women, after all, and you mustn't be hard on us."

"Judy, my dear, I am never hard on a woman, am I?"

"No! Indeed you're not," she avowed heartily. "You're the very incarnation of sweetness, and gentleness, and tenderness, and chivalry with them … But then you take it out of the men that cross you!"