This little, well Bonnie seems almost impossible to her. Bonnie going for a run—alone into the wood!
Crosby comes up to her.
‘I hardly realize it,’ she says gently, her eyes still upon the retreating form of the child.
‘A great many things are hard to realize,’ says he. ‘For my part, I find it very hard to see myself supplanted.’
‘Supplanted?’
‘Decidedly. And by the redoubtable James. By the way, Susan, I think you gave me a distinctly wrong impression of that hero in the beginning of our acquaintance. He doesn’t look half so wild as you represented him.’
‘As for that’—indifferently—‘I suppose they have drilled him.’
‘He’s quite presentable,’ glancing at the young soldier in question, who, a few yards off, is looking as ugly as any impressionist could desire, and sulky into the bargain. He can see that Susan is sitting with a stranger, and evidently quite content—and—who the deuce is that fellow, anyway?
‘What did you expect him to be?’ asks Susan.
‘Unpresentable, of course. I’ve been immensely taken in. And by you, Susan! You quite led me to expect something interesting—a rare specimen—and here he is, as like one of the rest of us as two peas.’