While other people were thinking about these things for him, Allan had no room for thought of any kind, unless a lover's meditation upon the image of the girl he loved could be dignified by the name of thought. For Allan, life was a perpetual ecstasy. To be with Suzette in her own home, at the Grove, on the links, anywhere--to be with her was all he needed for bliss. For his sake, his mother had prolonged her stay at Beechhurst, in order that the two young people might be together in the house where they were to live as man and wife. It was Allan's delight to make Suzette familiar with her future home. He wanted her to feel that this was the house in which she was to live; that under her father's roof she was no longer at home; that her books, her bric-à-brac, the multifarious accumulations of a happy girlhood, might as well be transferred at once to the sunny, bow-windowed upstair room which was to be her den. It was now a plainly furnished, matter-of-fact morning room, a room in which the Admiral had kept his boots, cigar-boxes, and business documents, and transacted the fussy futilities of his unoccupied life. The mantelpiece, which had been built up with shelves and artful cupboards for the accommodation of the Admiral's cigars, would serve excellently to set off Suzette's zoological china; her Dresden pugs, and rats, and lobsters, and pigs, and rabbits, her morsels of silver, and scraps of wrought copper would adorn the shelves; and all her little odds and ends and never-to-be-finished bits of fancy-work could be neatly stowed away in the cupboards. "But won't you want those dear little cubby-houses for your own cigars?" asked Suzette. "It seems too cruel to rob you of your uncle's snuggery. I've no doubt you smoke just as much as the Admiral." "Not cigars. My humble pipe and pouch can stow themselves away anywhere. I only smoke cigars out hunting, and I keep a box or two in the saddle-room for handiness. No, this is to be your room, Suzette. I have imagined you in it until it seems so to belong to you that I feel I am taking a liberty in writing a letter here. When are you going to bring the Dresden bow-wows, and the elephants, and mice, and lobsters, and donkeys?--all about of a size, by the way." "Oh, I could not possibly spare them," Suzette answered quickly, making for the door. They had come in to look at the room, and for Suzette to give her opinion as to the colour and style of the new papering. It was to be a Morris paper, although that would entail new carpet and curtains, and a complete revolution as to colouring. "Spare them!" echoed Allan, detaining her. "Who wants you to spare them? When will you bring them with you? When are you coming to take possession of the house which is no home for me until you are mistress of it?"