contents. It was the reply Warburton had depended on. I read it
aloud. It is good to have friends of this sort. No question was
asked. It was a bald order: "Come up at once and shoot caribou. Take
first train."

"Bob's a jackass," was Jack's commentary. I had heard something like
it before, that day. "He'll turn up all right;"--and Jack lit a cigar
and picked up his paper.

"And Betty Annesley is going to call to-morrow night," said Nancy,
her voice overflowing with reproach. Her eyes even sparkled with
tears. "I did so want them to meet."

I called myself a villain. But I had given my promise; and I was in
love myself.

"I don't see what we can do. When Bob makes up his mind to do
anything, he generally does it." Jack, believing he had demolished
the subject, opened his _Morning Post_ and fell to studying the
latest phases of the Venezuelan muddle.

Nancy began to cry softly; she loved the scalawag as only sisters
know how to love. And I became possessed with two desires; to console
her and to punch Mr. Robert's head.

"It has always been this way with him," Nancy went on, dabbing her
eyes with her two-by-four handkerchief. "We never dreamed that he was
going into the Army till he came home one night and announced that he
had successfully passed his examinations for West Point. He goes and
gets shot, and we never know anything about it till we read the