The older Bashford laughed outright. "Boys is boys!" he said. "You're really mad, ain't you, Bill? Well, I shan't stand in your way. I owe Pippin one myself, ---- ---- him! But--hell! he is a slick one, no two ways about that. Joshin' on the pious, is he? And Nipper's kit handy by? That's good, that is! We'll get in ahead of him, Bill, sure thing we will. Now le's go home and get a mou'ful of sleep before we start in." And all this time, while these three couples were spinning their unconscious threads for the Shuttle, under the quiet starlit sky the night train was drawing nearer and nearer, bringing among its hundred-odd passengers a quiet, bright-eyed man in clerical dress. CHAPTER XVIII PIPPIN KEEPS WATCH, WITH RESULTS Mary was a long time going to bed that night. In the first place she could not find her blue ribbon bow, and being as economical as she was methodical, this distressed her. It was a new ribbon, bought at a special sale, and marked down almost unbelievably low, because there was a flaw in the weaving which would never be seen when made up. It was a good bow too; it is not everyone who can make a pretty bow; and Mary was perfectly sure that she had pinned it on her neat collar this evening. She searched the room thoroughly--such a pretty, tidy room, all white and blue like her kitchen--even peeping under bed and bureau, but no blue bow was to be found. Then there was her chapter to be read; hard reading to-night, though it was Ruth, which she loved; hard to keep her mind on the text, her eyes on the page. Everything was all a-flutter, somehow. Mary sighed, and put her bookmark in soberly. She was not a very good girl, she thought, to be thinking of--other things--when she was reading her Bible. Then--blue kimono substituted for blue one-piece dress--out came Mary's hairpins and down came Mary's hair. It took a good while to do Mary's hair. It was not only the quantity of it--it flowed down and about her like a cloak--it was the quality. It _would_ curl up round the brush, and break into ripples in the very teeth of the comb. It was a storage battery of electricity, and if a thunderstorm were to come on now, while it was down, you would see long golden strands separate themselves from the mass and fly straight up from her head. There being no thunderstorms this night, Mary, with firm, long strokes of the brush, with searching arguments of the comb, brought all the unruly gold into subjection, made it lie as nearly smooth as it could over her shoulders, finally braided it tight in two massive braids to be tossed back over her shoulders with a little sigh. "_That's_ done!" said Mary. But even then, and even when her prayers were said and herself composed in her narrow white bed, as Saint Ursula in her wide one in the Parmegianino picture (looking rather like her, I declare!), Mary was not ready for sleep.