now!" and Mrs. Buchanan departed after bestowing a glance, in which was a
conviction of dyspepsia, upon all three of them.

"Now, David Kildare, see what you've done with your black-cat crawlings!
I'll have to eat that toast--see if I don't! I've consumed it with a
smile during stated periods for thirty years. Yes, girl-love is a kind
of cup-custard, but wife-love is bread and butter--milk toast, for
instance--bless her! But I am hungry!" The major's expression was a
tragedy.

"I'm going to try and beg you off, Major, dear," said Caroline Darrah,
and she hurried after Mrs. Matilda into Tempie's domain.

"Major," said David as he gazed after the girl, "when I look at her I
feel cold all over, then hot-mad! He's going to-morrow night on the
midnight train--and she doesn't know! I can't even talk to him
about it--he looks like a dead man and works like a demon. I don't know
what to do!"

"David," said the major slowly as he pressed the tips of his long lean
fingers together and regarded them intently, "how love, tender wise love,
love that is fed on heart's blood and lives by soul-breath, can go deaf,
blind, dumb, halt, broken-winged, idiotic and mortally cruel is more than
I can see. God Almighty comfort him when he finds what he has done!"

"And if she does find it out she won't understand," exclaimed David.

"No," answered the major, "she doesn't even suspect anything. She thinks
it is the press of his work that keeps him away from her. The child
carries about with her that aura of transport that only an acknowledgment