Should I not come back, you will find my affairs in perfect order, and Baronrigg waiting for you. Your trustees are Lord Eskerley and Alan Laing. Should neither of us come back—
"Don't read any more, dear," said Marjorie.
"All right!" replied Roy. "That's practically all now." He folded the letter and put it away in his tunic.
"I wish," he added thoughtfully—"I wish fathers and sons could get to know one another a bit better while they have the chance!" Then, "I wonder what regiment he enlisted in! I wonder if we shall ever meet out there! I'm sorry he didn't see you before he went. You'd have liked him, I think."
"I like him now," said Marjorie, with shining eyes. "I think he's splendid! And"—she broke into a happy laugh—"I like him particularly at this moment, because he has given you to me for four days more instead of two!"
"Let's go shopping!" said Roy, rising importantly.
II
After a gloriously deliberate start, the six days, as usual, gathered momentum. The last forty-eight hours whizzed by like an eighteen-pounder shell.
On Wednesday morning Roy, once more equipped in mud-stained khaki and bristling with portable property, appeared at the flat for breakfast at nine o'clock. Marjorie was ready for him. Liss joined the party a little later. For all her feather-head, she was no mean tactician. Having conscientiously effaced herself throughout the week, instinct now told her that her presence at the parting breakfast would be a good thing. So she uprooted herself from her beloved bed, and entered upon the task of distracting the lovers from the contemplation of the immediate future.
"I thought it was just time," she announced to Roy, "to bring myself to your notice a little. I am here, you know! I have been here most of the week, only I don't think you observed me very much."