When he sang it, he and Peter would look at one another, with eyes laughing, and would talk of Kay--of how they had commenced their friendship by fighting over her, and of how--of so many things that were kind and golden, like memories of spring days when the wind is blowing. Little Kay, with her delicate face and shining hair, she stood a white flower in the shadow-wood of remembrance--a narcissus-shrine to which their steps were continually returning. So, while undergraduates of the Roy Hardcastle type shouted themselves hoarse on Saturday nights at college wine-clubs, making a rowdy effort to be men, Peter and Harry, without effort, remained boys and sat concocting fairy-tale letters to a little girl at Topbury. They refused to credit the evidence of their eyes, that she was growing up. They signed their letters jointly, filling them with ridiculous tenderness. She received them every Monday morning at breakfast, and was made to feel that she was still a sharer in their lives. Because Cherry postponed her coming, Peter had to have some outlet for his affection. In a curious way he made his little sister the temporary substitute for the girl he loved. It did not occur to him to inquire what motives prompted Harry's epistolary philanthropy. Jehane did not at once fulfil her promise to send her girls to stay with Professor Usk. On his return home for Christmas Peter discovered the reason. Riska was in the throes of her first romance. At Topbury shoulders were shrugged. Of course girls of fifteen did have their flirtations, but it was only among the lower-classes that they were openly acknowledged and dignified into love-affairs. Jehane, however, took the matter seriously. She explained why. The young fellow was a good catch and four years Riska's senior; he was the son of a speculative builder who was invading Southgate with an army of jerry-built villas. The story of how Riska had effected the young man's capture proved that Jehane's training had been efficient. Riska had shown a fine faculty for seizing her strategic opportunity. Barrington's comment when he heard it was brief and to the point, “Ought to be spanked. If she grows up this way, she'll make her face the dumping-ground for anybody's kisses.” That was just it; in her fear lest her girls should never marry, Jehane had taught Riska, who was more apt a pupil than Glory, to welcome any comer without fastidiousness. There was nothing heaven-sent about marriage; it was a lucky-bag, into which you thrust your hand and grabbed; or, to employ her old parable, maidenhood was a raft from which girls who were wise escaped at the first opportunity, in cockle-boats, on boards and even by swimming--the great object was to reach the land of matrimony before the distance between the shore and the raft had lengthened. Possibly one might get wet in the effort. One couldn't be too nice over an affair so desperate. It was anything to attain a marriage-song.