DEAREST DOODLES,--You'd simply love this. I never enjoyed myself so much in all my life. Can't write you a decent letter because I'm just off chivvying Uhlans. It's got fox-hunting beat a thousand times. Sorry we had that row when I made such an ass of myself at Arrowsmith's that night. It's a lucky thing you were firm, because you've got just enough to go on with until I get back. Mustn't say too much in a letter; but I suppose we shall have chivvied these bounders back to Berlin in two or three months. Then I shall really have to settle down and do something in earnest. A man in ours says that Queensland isn't such a bad sort of hole. Old Cleveden put me against it by cracking it up so. It's suddenly struck me that Houston is probably a spy. If he is, you might make it rather unpleasant for him. I feel I haven't explained properly how sorry I am, but it's so deuced hard in a letter. By the way, Uncle Chat has just written rather a stupid letter about my mother's jointure. Perhaps you'd go down and talk to him about it. He ought to understand I'm too busy to bother about domestic finance at present. I had another notion--rather a bright one--that when I get back you and I could appear on the stage together. Rather a rag, eh? The captain of my troop was pipped last week. Awful good egg. I'm acting captain now. Paignton sends his love. Dear old thing, I wish you were out here with me. Yours ever, TONY. A week later the fifth Earl of Clarehaven was killed in action. CHAPTER VI I Dorothy was at Little Cherrington when the news of Tony's death reached her. The dowager had already vacated Clare Lodge, and with a few of her dearest possessions was now established in Cherrington Cottage. Only extreme necessity could have driven her into that particular abode, because in order for her to go into it, Mr. Greenish had to go out of it, which upset Mr. Greenish so much that he went out of Cherrington altogether, out of Devonshire, even, and as far away as Hampshire. His choice of a county was the dowager's only consolation; Connie lived in Hampshire; the world was small; Mr. Greenish and Bella might even yet come together. Bella, absorbed in her short stories--one of which had been accepted, but not published, and another of which had been published but not paid for--found that the chief objection to being in Cherrington Cottage was the noise that the children made going to and from school. It was strange to find Bella, who in her youth had made as much noise even as Connie, so dependent now upon quiet; but in whatever divine hands mortals fall, their behavior usually changes radically afterward. We all know what love can do for anybody; we all know what the Salvation Army can do for anybody; and if Virgil's account of the Cumæan Sibyl may be trusted, the transforming influence of Apollo is second to none.