"It's I who am the beast," I managed to gasp out, because I saw he was badly distressed about me, and what he had done. "I'm crying because I'm a little beast. But I'd like not to be." "You're not. You're a little soldier. Will you forgive me? I didn't mean to preach." "You didn't preach. I expect you'd talk like that to a real soldier--one of those you're captain of. Well, I'll pretend I'm one of those soldiers, and that you're my captain." As I spoke, the taxi was drawing up in front of his hotel; but I went straight on with my play, and gave him a military salute. "Thank you, Captain," said I, "for taking an interest. I shan't forget. No more fibs! I'll work for my corporal's stripe!" "Good child!" he beamed on me, looking young and happy again. "I'll get you the stripe. I have it ready for you upstairs. I'll bring it down when I bring the money for the lace scarf. Would you rather wait in the taxi, or will you come into the ladies' parlour in the hotel?" I thought "parlour" a lovely word, and very French, though I supposed it might be American, too. It was quite an adventure going into an hotel. My captain (already I'd begun to think of him as that, since he'd called me a soldier) paid the chauffeur and led me to a big drawing-room where several women sat, so prettily dressed and so trim that they made me feel shabby in my brown holland frock and my blown-about hair. I wondered what he had meant by saying he would bring me a "corporal's stripe," and whether he had meant anything at all, except a passing joke. Somehow, I felt that he had had a definite idea, but I didn't dream it would be anything half so fascinating as it turned out. He was not gone more than five or six minutes, and when he appeared again he drew up a chair in front of me, deliberately turning his back to the other occupants of the room, so that they could not see what was going on. Then he made me hold out my hands (I was ashamed of my untidy gloves) and receive in them ten golden sovereigns, which he counted as they dropped into my open palms. "I hope you'll never regret bartering away your great-great-grandmother's beautiful lace for this pittance," said he. "And now for the corporal's stripe, if you're going to enlist in my regiment." "I am," I cried. "I've enlisted in it already."