'It's only for a year,' said Toffy hopefully. 'Let's make a solemn covenant that we shall meet in this very room on the 25th of October 1911, with the wedding-day fixed for to-morrow again.' 'Where is your Bible?' said Peter. 'If you haven't one in your pocket or under your pillow, will it do if I kiss your account-book?' 'The whole thing can be just as we intended it to be,' said Toffy cheerfully. 'And this time next year Jane will be staying with Miss Abingdon, and old Wrot will be ironing out his surplice--at least Mrs. Wrot will, and he 'll look on and think he 's doing it. And I 'll be here, probably with a cold in my head as usual, and thereto I plight thee my troth!' He fingered in his pocket the wedding-ring which Peter had given him for safe custody, and the care of which had seriously disturbed his slumbers at night. 'I 'll keep the ring until then, Peter, and place it on the third finger of Jane's left hand. No, no, you do that, by the way; and I shall have to wait until I get a wife of my own.' 'Here 's to her good health!' said Peter. And they endeavoured to be lively, as befits the subject of weddings; but Peter was thinking that perhaps his own wedding-day might be five years hence, and however they might plan that it should be the same as they had first intended, it was a long time to wait. And Toffy was wondering how long Horace Avory meant to live, and if Carrie would mind very much his going to Argentine, and whether she would write him one of those long tear-blistered letters in her indistinct handwriting, which he found so hard to read, and, suppose Horace Avory never died (as seemed quite likely), what would be the end of it all? Also, he wondered whether Carrie and Miss Sherard would get on well together if they were to meet, and he hoped with manly stupidity that they might be friends. But what he wondered more than anything else at present was whether Kitty Sherard would allow him to go and say good-bye to her. Toffy was feeling ill, and his vitality was low; in his weakness he thought with an insistence that was almost homesick in its intensity how beautiful it would be to see her in this ugly old house of his, in one of her rose-coloured gowns, and with her brown curls and her hopelessly baffling and bewildering manner of speech. And each of the two young men, being absorbed in quite other subjects, talked cheerfully of the voyage, and speculated on what sort of sport they might incidentally get; and they discussed much more seriously the fishing flies and guns they should take with them than the possible finding of Peter's brother or Peter's own change of fortune. Lydia, listening at the door before she went to bed, for no particular reason except that her aunt had forbidden it, decided that her master and Captain Ogilvie were planning a sporting expedition together--'which means dullness and aunt for me for a few months to come,' said Lydia, with a sniff. CHAPTER X