more before we go in!” called the pink girl.
“Here’s Mr. Varian. Come and help us out—the colonel’s beaten!” added Mrs. Dud.
“Here, puss! here, puss!” With excited little shrieks and laughs they dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts. Varian shook his head good-naturedly.
“Too late, too late!” he called back, and taking pity on the puffing, purple colonel, he bore him off.
“Thank God! I’m just about winded! I’d have dropped in my tracks,” complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed contentedly.
“When I see that sort of thing, I think we’ve made a mistake—eh, Varian?” he said, half serious. “It’s a poor job, getting old alone. Live at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to get asked again, nobody to care if you’re sick, always play the other fellow’s game—little monotonous after a while, eh?”
Varian nodded. “Right enough,” he said.
“Different ending to their route!” suggested the colonel, jerking his elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery.
“That’s it!” The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.
He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially,