“None,” said she, promptly. “I merely adopted him as my son.”
“Are you crazy?” inquired her mother.
Even Miss Watts looked alarmed.
“No, I’m a patriot. Down at Bermuda I met a girl I knew at school, Agnes Pollock. She told me about being patriotic, and how she wrote cheerful letters to soldiers in the trenches. So I borrowed two from her, Jean and Edouard. I wrote them nice motherly letters, about keeping their feet dry——”
Wally burst into laughter, but Mrs. Bryce hushed him with a violent gesture.
“They called me ‘Ma chère marraine,’ and wrote long letters back. It was splendid practice for my French,” she added.
“But this man wouldn’t be wanting to marry his ‘chère marraine’,” challenged Mrs. Bryce.
“No. He wrote rather warm letters from the first, but Agnes and I decided that he had a warm, appreciative nature.”
“Little fools! Then what?”