'Doing no harm? If you didn't encourage him, do you think he'd hang about like that? If he knew distinctly you wanted him to be off, do you think he'd spend his time slinking about the streets? I believe he has been writing to you again.' This was quite a random shot, but it told. 'He sent me one letter--not in his own handwriting,' Madge confessed, diffidently. 'Show it to me!' 'I can't. I burned it. I was afraid. Tom, you wouldn't get the poor fellow into trouble!' 'I've no patience with you!' he said angrily. 'Why can't you be fair and aboveboard? Why don't you send the fellow about his business at once----' 'Well, I have.' 'Why don't you settle the thing straight? You know Frank King wants to marry you: anybody can see that. Why don't you have him, and be done with it?' Madge turned away a little, and said with a very pretty smile, 'And so I would, if he would ask me.' Well, Mr. Tom thought he knew something of the ways of womankind, from having been brought up among so many; but this fairly took his breath away. He stared at her. He laid down his cue. 'Well, I'm smashed,' he said at length. And then he added slowly, 'I'm glad I've got nothing to do with you women. I believe you'd roast any fellow alive, and then cut him into bits for fourpence-half-penny. It isn't more than three months since you were crying your eyes out about that fellow Hanbury----' 'You were as anxious as any one he should be sent away,' retorted Madge. 'It appears I can't please every one. Perhaps, on the whole, it would be as well to continue the game, for I only want three to be out.' Tom gave up. He continued the game, and played so savagely and so well that poor Madge never got her three. And he did not recur to that subject except to say the last thing at night, as the girls were leaving-- 'Look here, Madge, that fellow Hanbury had better take care.' 'I suppose he can look after himself,' said Madge. 'I have nothing to do with him. Only you can't expect me not to be sorry for him. And how am I to send him away when I dare not speak to him? And do you think the streets of Brighton belong to me?' Tom again gave up, but was more convinced than ever that women were strange creatures, who could not be straightforward even when they tried. From that and similar generalisations, however, he invariably excepted Nan. Nan did not belong to womankind as considered as a section of the human race. Nan was Nan. The next afternoon Captain King called to say good-bye. He found the girls very busy over Christmas cards. Madge was painting little studies of flowers for exceptionally favoured people, and she invited him to look over these. 'They are very pretty,' he said. 'I hope the people who are fortunate enough to get them will value them. I mean they are not like ordinary Christmas cards.' 'Oh, if you like them,' said Madge, modestly, 'you might take one for yourself.'