"She's an awfully nice girl," jerked his chum, as they crunched the gravelled drive to the house; "but it's no good fooling around in that quarter—everyone knows she's gone on Rosser, some say engaged, but I don't think it's come to that."
"What's he in?" questioned Yate, soldier-like believing that every man that is a man and not a vegetable must be "in" something.
"Oh, he's waiting for the Gazette as we are. He scraped in through the militia, as much to his own amazement as to everyone else's."
Yate's opinion of Miss Silver's suitor shrivelled.
He was himself a mightily clever youngster who had passed into Sandhurst straight from the schoolroom. Perhaps fate had favoured him in providing on the mother's side some German profundity and on the father's a sturdy vertebral column and proportionate wrappings of British muscle; perhaps it had not, for inside the profundity was a luxuriant growth of romance, and through the British muscle coursed subdued but dangerous fires.
"He's a good-looking chap," explained Harry—for Rosser was an old friend—"a dashing rider, and a capital shot—everyone likes him."
"Lucky fellow," grunted Yate. "I've often observed that the failures are quite the most popular."
"Because it's their popularity that does for them." Harry, who had occupied a humble position on the nethermost hem of the Sandhurst list, was conscious that his own anxiety for cavalry was due rather to the "beggars can't be choosers" system of the idle and popular ones than to a direct equestrian penchant.
"And women pet them; they'd prefer a fool who can pot rabbits and do a barn-dance to Homer himself," growled Yate.
"I expect Homer in the flesh was a bit flabby," said Harry, contemplatively rubbing the knob of his stick over an immaculate chin. At this moment the door was opened, and they were invited to follow straight through the house to where the conservatory gave on to a rose garden; Miss Silver and her mother were there reading, said the maid.