“Why, of course! Who else? I’ve a great belief in Con. He’ll go far before he’s through. And I know Alma. And it’s only in the light of Con that I can explain her.” “You’re just an incorrigible old match-maker,” laughed Mrs Dare, more amused than convinced. “When you’re out of the game yourself there’s nothing like watching the young ones at it. If it had been my luck now to meet yourself before Dare came along----” “You’d have found me in my cradle,” she laughed again, as she went up the path towards the front door. “No,--in short frocks,” said the Colonel emphatically. “But I’d have waited all right.” It was a standing joke among them that the Colonel had fallen in love with his neighbour’s wife, and he confessed to it like a man, to John Dare’s very face. “Duty calls,” said Mrs Dare. “I’ve got two rooms to turn out this morning, because my charlady couldn’t come yesterday. And there she is going in at the back gate. Good-bye, Colonel! I’m half hoping Con may come over to-day. It’s three weeks since he was here and he sometimes manages it on a Saturday. I’ll send you word if he comes and perhaps you’ll come round for a cup of tea.” “I will. And bring Alma with me,” he twinkled. “Is she to be here? I didn’t know.” “Neither do I, but they generally manage to hit on the same day somehow. Curious, isn’t it?” and he lifted his hat and marched away, chuckling to himself like a plump little turkey-cock. IV Con’s visits were like those of the angels, unexpected, generally unannounced, and always very welcome. The one curious thing about them was, as the Colonel had said, that, as often as not, they coincided in most extraordinary fashion with the whirling home-calls of Alma Luard. And whenever it happened so, the Colonel chuckled himself nearly into a fit in private, and in public preserved his innocent unconsciousness with difficulty. Mrs Dare went off to superintend the operations of her charlady, whose attention to corners and little details in general was subject to lapses unless the eye of the mistress was within easy range. And as Mrs Skirrow worked best under a sense of personal injury Mrs Dare became of necessity the recipient of all her conjugal woes and endless stories of filial ingratitude. She had a husband,--an old soldier in every sense of the word,--who was cursed with a constitutional objection to authority and work of any kind, and two sons who took after their father. One or the other stumbled into a place now and again and lost it immediately, and Mrs Skirrow slaved night and day to keep them from any deeper depths than half-a-crown a day and her food was able to save them from. “Is ut true, mum, that we’ll mebbe be having another war?” asked Mrs Skirrow as she flopped and scrubbed. “I hope not, Mrs Skirrow, but there’s said to be the possibility of it. We must hope we’ll be able to keep out of it. War is very terrible.”