"Oh, Pobbles. He doesn't count in this scrap. He's practically never in the mess, so the bad manners and bad boots of a cad don't interfere with his digestion. Besides, he was responsible for landing us with the fellow. I don't suppose he ever dreamed for a moment that a man of that type would dare--or wish--to stay on as an officer of the regiment after the war. But there it is! To save his own face the C.O. could hardly give Garth the cold shoulder. Pobbles whitewashed himself by extolling the swine as a soldier, and quoting such stuff as 'hearts are more than coronets,' and so on." "Aren't they?" murmured Marise. "Oh, of course, in the way you mean. But not in the mess of a Guards regiment." "I see," said the girl, with a blue twinkle beneath the admired lashes. For some reason it amused her to wave a red flag, and play with the lordly Severance as with a baited bull, under her mother's cautioning glances. It was just a mood. Marise wasn't even sure that she did not agree with Tony; and she was certain that Mums agreed. No lady possessed of ancestral jewels, handed down from beheaded aristocrats, could afford to hide the smallest coronet under the biggest bushel of hearts, in a mess, or a drawing-room, or anywhere! Poor Mums, she was being baited, too! But it was rather fun. And it could do no harm, since Marise counted Tony her own forever. "So all of you younger officers have been doing your best to squeeze my poor countryman out?" she ventured on. "Not because he's a countryman of yours. You must understand that! Because he's impossible. And for the honour of the regiment. I'm sorry to say, though, that we weren't unanimous in the matter. There have been two or three--er--not rows, but something in that line, a few men inclining to let Garth 'dree his own weird,' and learn for himself that he's a square peg in a round hole. But Billy Ravenswood and Cecil de Marchand and I took a firm stand." "I can see you taking it!" giggled Marise. "You took the firm stand on one foot only, and kicked with the other! When you got tired of the exercise, and had to sit down, you sat on Major Garth, V.C.--sat hard!" Severance laughed a little too, her giggle was so contagious. Besides, at last, she did seem to be entering into the spirit of the game. "Something of the sort," he admitted, not without pride in remembered achievements. "The lot of an intruder among us isn't a happy one." "I should think not, if the rest are like you," said Marise. "I've seen you perfectly horrid to quite inoffensive people you didn't happen to approve of." "The person you force me to discuss, dear child, is the opposite of inoffensive," amended Severance. "Can't we drop him?" "You seem to have done so successfully already," said she. "As he's on this ship, homeward bound, the regiment is rid of him, isn't it?"