respectable. I shall wear a white marguerite in my buttonhole.
Will you also carry a bunch of the same flower?

"Yours to command,

"CAPTAIN JACK."


So great was her interest in the affair that Blix even went out
with Condy while he mailed the letters in the nearest box, for he
was quite capable of forgetting the whole matter as soon as he was
out of the house.

"Now let it work!" she exclaimed as the iron flap clanked down
upon the disappearing envelopes. But Condy was suddenly smitten
with nameless misgiving. "Now we've done it! now we've done it!"
he cried aghast. "I wish we hadn't. We're in a fine fix now."

Still uneasy, he saw Blix back to the flat, and bade her good-by
at the door.

But before she went to bed that night, Blix sought out her father,
who was still sitting up tinkering with the cuckoo clock, which he
had taken all to pieces under the pretext that it was out of order
and went too fast.

"Papum," said Blix, sitting down on the rug before him, "did you
ever--when you were a pioneer, when you first came out here in the
fifties--did you ever play poker?"