"Now that Tony's time is so dreadfully taken up," she said to her mother, "he can't give us any fun, or have any fun with us himself, so we might as well go away. _Let's_, dear! Let's clear out to-morrow, and take Peggy to meet Lady Di and the others at Albuquerque, where we can get into the 'Limited' and join them." "I don't know what Tony will say!" wavered Mrs. Dalziel, who was finding El Paso rather hot in those days, for plump people. She looked at me. So did Milly. Then Milly laughed. "No good pretending we've got cotton wool over our eyes," she exclaimed. "Can't you make up your mind to take my poor, dear little brother, Peggy, and put him out of his misery?" "Tony and I understand each other already," I said. "Do you? Oh, I'm _so_ glad, so pleased," they both cried together. And I had to explain in a violent hurry, before I had been caressed under false pretences, that there are understandings _and_ understandings. Tony's and mine was the kind of understanding which left us both perfectly free; the kind of understanding where you didn't make up your mind, but just waited to see whether it made itself up. "Isn't there anything between you and the poor boy, then?" implored the boy's mother. "Only--a kiss," I said. "One--on a cheek. My cheek." "Well, that's something," she sighed. "At least, it was when I was a girl." It was not much to me, though it might have been to a better regulated flapper. I couldn't dwell on such trifles as kisses. I thought only of the coming court-martial. CHAPTER XIII The "understanding" remained _in statu quo_ (whatever that means; the expression was his) between Tony and me, when Mrs. Dalziel and Milly and I turned our backs on El Paso. We had a night at Albuquerque, which made me homesick for past days, because the hotel where we stopped had the name of Alvarado. I hadn't known that I was happy at the Springs, but in looking back it seemed as though I must have been without a care. Milly and her mother bought wonderful Indian curios and gorgeous Mexican opals and silver spoons set with turquoises at Albuquerque, and Milly was almost feverishly gay; but I guessed that at heart, if she had an organ worth the name, she was nearly as wretched as I. For she had failed; and she had let the venom of her spite poison her nature, trying to tell herself that she rejoiced because of Eagle's misfortunes, and that it was very good, as things turned out, to be free of him and his fate. No one can really be happy with such poison in the veins, and there can't possibly be deep-down, soul-satisfying enjoyment from revelling in another's misfortunes. Underneath my fury, when Milly said little veiled, spiteful things about Captain March, was pity for her, the kind of pity you have for an irritable invalid who snaps.