is all."

Meanwhile the old Squire, who had been making a prodigious fuss with
his hat and stick, which he managed to send clattering down the flight
of stone steps, departed to get ready, saying in a kind of roar as he
went that Ida was to order in the dinner, as he would be down in a
minute.

Accordingly she rang the bell, and told the maid to bring in the soup
in five minutes and to lay another place. Then turning to Harold she
began to apologise to him.

"I don't know what sort of dinner you will get, Colonel Quaritch," she
said; "it is so provoking of my father; he never gives one the least
warning when he is going to ask any one to dinner."

"Not at all--not at all," he answered hurriedly. "It is I who ought to
apologise, coming down on you like--like----"

"A wolf on the fold," suggested Ida.

"Yes, exactly," he went on earnestly, looking at his coat, "but not in
purple and gold."

"Well," she went on laughing, "you will get very little to eat for
your pains, and I know that soldiers always like good dinners."

"How do you know that, Miss de la Molle?"

"Oh, because of poor James and his friends whom he used to bring here.