fair-skinned English girl, liable to honest change from pale to pink,
according to the dictates of an arbitrary climate. Her eyes were of a
dark grey-blue, straightforward and steady, with a shadow of thought in
them which made wise people respect her presence. She was not painfully
beautiful, like the heroine of a novel--nor abnormally plain, like the
antitype who has found her way into fiction, and there (alone) brings all
hearts to her feet.

"Is Jem glad?" she asked cheerfully. "Is he thirsting for gore and
glory?"

"Oh, delighted! Arthur will be so pleased too. Dear boy, _he_ is so
interested in soldiers, but of course he could not go into the army! He
is too delicate--besides, the life is rough, and the risks are very
great."

Mrs. Agar was speaking with her head slightly inclined to one side, and
she never raised her adoring eyes from the photograph of the insipid
young man. Had she done so she would have seen a look of patient, if
comic, resignation come over the face of her youthful companion at the
mention of her son's name.

"I will tell mother," said Dora Glynde, purposely ignoring Arthur Agar,
whose name was always dragged sooner or later into every conversation.
"Fancy Jem in a helmet, or a turban, with his face blacked! All the same,
if I were a man I should be a soldier. When does he go--to join his
regiment?"

"Oh, almost at once."