If it was in war time I would say nothing, but now it is very different.

Well, gentlemen, I shall leave you to your wine.

Mr.
Halbert, I like you very much, but I wish you hadn't turned Jim's head." She left them, and walked down the garden; through the twilight among the vines, which were dropping their yellow leaves lightly on the turf before the breath of the autumn evening.

So Jim was going,--going to be killed probably, or only coming back after ten years' absence, "full of strange oaths and bearded like a pard!" She knew well how her father would jump at his first hint of being a soldier, and would move heaven and earth to get him a commission,--yes, he would go--her own darling, funny, handsome Jim, and she would be left all alone.
No, not quite! There is a step on the path behind her that she knows; there is an arm round her waist which was never there before, and yet she starts not as a low voice in her ear says,-- "Alice, my love, my darling, I have come after you to tell you that you are dearer to me than my life, and all the world besides.

Can you love me half as well as I love you?
Alice, will you be my wife ?" What answer?
Her hands pressed to her face, with flood of happy tears, she only says,-- "Oh! I'm so happy, Sam! So glad, so glad!" Pipe up there, golden-voiced magpie; give us one song more before you go to roost.