THE WOOING OF ROSAMOND FAYRE BY BERTA RUCK (MRS. OLIVER ONIONS) Author of "His Official Fiancée" NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY Dedication (LONDON, NOW) TO BODO WHO FIRST TOLD ME STORIES (FORMBY, LONG AGO) CONTENTS PART I _IN TIME OF PEACE_ CHAPTER Introduction--Two Girls and a Man-in-the-Air I "Darling" per pro II A Man's Answer III The Meeting IV The First Call V The New Moon VI Plan--and Super-Plan VII Check! VIII Crows to Pluck IX The Wrong Girl X The Other Girl XI The Hen-Party XII The Sound of a Kiss XIII A White Night XIV A Paper-Chase XV Fellow-Conspirators XVI "Not to be Forwarded" PART II _IN TIME OF WAR_ I The Call to Arms II The White Feather III The Day IV "On Account of the War" V London in Khaki VI Recruiting-Ribbons VII The Reservist's Wife VIII Allies IX War-Paint X The Last Line Postscript--Wish and Fulfilment THE WOOING OF ROSAMOND FAYRE _PART I_ IN TIME OF PEACE INTRODUCTION TWO GIRLS AND A MAN-IN-THE-AIR "Love-letters are the paper-currency for kisses, after all. So imagine having to write another girl's love-letters! Imagine an engaged girl who commissioned another girl to kiss her _fiancé_ for her! Really, it wouldn't be much more extraordinary than what she wants me to do!" And Rosamond Fayre, the secretary-girl (who was incidentally a golden-blonde, goddess built) sat back in the Sheraton chair before the drawing-room of Urquhart's Court, Kent, and gasped again. "_I_ write to her young man for her? A girl's courtship letter? The sort of live, intimate personal thing that oughtn't to have the trace of a third person's touch about it? It's not my job at all," Rosamond told herself, indignantly. "No one would have thought of giving me such a thing to do--except Eleanor!" Now the "Eleanor" in question was Miss Urquhart of Urquhart's Court. She was a small olive-skinned brunette, with dark conscientious eyes, a tiny, tight-lipped mouth, and a spare brown hand. That hand wasn't the kind of hand upon which one expects to see the blaze of the sapphire-set-with-diamond engagement ring that Miss Urquhart wore. She was immersed in "good works" of every description. And because "good works" bring in their train an endless string of business-letters--because Eleanor Urquhart, though she possessed a fine head for figures, lacked the pen of a readier writer, she usually employed the readier click of the typewriter belonging to a lady secretary (who lived at the Court with herself and her father) to cope with her correspondence.... Really reliable secretary-girls are about as plentiful as really Heaven-born cooks, or artists. The arrangement had been rather reminiscent of the tragedy of those ten little niggers!