Presently Susan, smiling sweetly, and shaking her head as if giving a very soft refusal to some proposal on the part of James, comes this way. Tommy has caught hold of Bonnie’s hand—the new Bonnie, who can now run about with him—and is dragging him towards the little wood, and Susan is protesting. But now Bonnie is protesting too. ‘I can go, Susan. I have walked a great deal farther than that. I have really.’ Crosby, watching still, as if infatuated, can see that Susan is studying Bonnie silently, as if in great amazement. This little, well Bonnie seems almost impossible to her. Bonnie going for a run—alone into the wood! Crosby comes up to her. ‘I hardly realize it,’ she says gently, her eyes still upon the retreating form of the child. ‘A great many things are hard to realize,’ says he. ‘For my part, I find it very hard to see myself supplanted.’ ‘Supplanted?’ ‘Decidedly. And by the redoubtable James. By the way, Susan, I think you gave me a distinctly wrong impression of that hero in the beginning of our acquaintance. He doesn’t look half so wild as you represented him.’ ‘As for that’—indifferently—‘I suppose they have drilled him.’ ‘He’s quite presentable,’ glancing at the young soldier in question, who, a few yards off, is looking as ugly as any impressionist could desire, and sulky into the bargain. He can see that Susan is sitting with a stranger, and evidently quite content—and—who the deuce is that fellow, anyway? ‘What did you expect him to be?’ asks Susan. ‘Unpresentable, of course. I’ve been immensely taken in. And by you, Susan! You quite led me to expect something interesting—a rare specimen—and here he is, as like one of the rest of us as two peas.’ ‘Did you expect him to have two heads?’ asks Susan, with a rather ungrateful levity, considering James is an old friend of hers. ‘I hardly hoped for so much,’ says Crosby. ‘I’m not greedy. As a rule I am thankful for small mercies—perhaps’—with a thoughtful glance at her—‘because big ones don’t come my way. And I don’t think you need be so very angry with me, Susan, because I think the excellent James less ugly than’—with a reproachful air—‘I had been led to believe.’ ‘I think him hideous,’ says Susan promptly, and with no attempt at softening of any sort. ‘Alas! Poor James! But do you really?’ ‘Very really,’ says Susan, laughing. ‘Just look at his profile.’ ‘It’s a good honest one,’ says Crosby. ‘If a trifle——’ ‘Well, I suppose it’s the trifle,’ says Susan. ‘I have seen worse.’