"Sweet Polly, may I speak?"
A solid square stool, well adapted for present purposes, was close at hand; and promptly down upon this with both knees went the tall grenadier, in the most approved fashion of his day. Sweet Polly could not long stand out against this earnest pleading. So, with a show of coy reserve, she gradually yielded, intimating that she did like him just a little; that some day or other she thought she could be his wife; that meantime she would manage somehow to keep him in her memory.
Promptly down upon this with both knees
went the tall grenadier.
"And next week you are away to Paris," she said, perhaps secretly wondering why he did not spend his leave in Bath. "For a whole fortnight."
"I could wish I were not going; but all is arranged, and the Colonel depends upon me. I must not fail him now at the last. If I can see my way to return at the end of a se'nnight, I will assuredly do so. If not—I shall still have a fortnight after we come home. I shall know what to do with that time, sweetheart."
[CHAPTER III]
A MAN AMONG TEN THOUSAND
HALF-AN-HOUR later, Denham Ivor, with Roy by his side, walked down the street, his grave face alight with a new joy. Roy, ever his devoted admirer, glanced upward once and again with boyish wonder. He had never seen that look before. He decided that the journey into France was as delightful in prospect to Denham as to himself.