be told, and if you don't know her you can't be," a floundering friend
had once concluded her exposition of why Katie was so "army." For her to
marry outside the army would be regarded as little short of treason.

To-day she was giving a little undisturbing consideration to that thing
of her marrying. For it was her twenty-fifth birthday, and twenty-fifth
birthdays are prone to knock at the door of matrimonial possibilities.
Just then the knock seemed answered by Captain Prescott. Unblushingly
Miss Jones considered that doubtless before the summer was over she would
be engaged to him. And quite likely she would follow up the engagement
with a wedding. It seemed time for her to be following up some of her
engagements.

She did not believe that she would at all mind marrying Harry Prescott.
All his people liked all hers, which would facilitate things at the
wedding; she would not be rudely plunged into a new set of friends, which
would be trying at her time of life. Everything about him was quite all
right: he played a good game of golf, not a maddening one of bridge,
danced and rode in a sort of joy of living fashion. And she liked the way
he showed his teeth when he laughed. She always thought when he laughed
most unreservedly that he was going to show more of them; but he never
did; it interested her.

And it interested her the way people said: "Prescott? Oh yes--he was in
Cuba, wasn't he?" and then smiled a little, perhaps shrugged a trifle,
and added:

"Great fellow--Prescott. Never made a mess of things, anyhow."

To have vague association with the mysterious things of life, and yet not