"Home for the holidays! They are always home, and it is always a holiday with them."
"Do you not allow them to lunch with you?"
She laughed again.
"They do not breakfast till ten or eleven."
Jack felt a little fogged, and waited for further information.
"Will you take beer or claret? No, thank you; no curry for me. Jane, Mr. Dunquerque will take a glass of beer. How beautiful!" she went on, looking steadily in the young man's face, to his confusion—"how beautiful it must be to meet a man whose life you have saved! I should like—once—just once—to do a single great action, and dream of it ever after."
"But mine was not a great action. I shot a bear which was following Mr. Beck and meant mischief; that is all."
"But you might have missed," said Phillis, with justice. "And then Mr. Beck would have been killed."
Might have missed! How many V.C.'s we should have but for that simple possibility! Might have missed! And then Gilead Beck would have been clawed, and the Golden Butterfly destroyed, and this history never have reached beyond its first chapter. Above all, Phillis might never have known Jack Dunquerque.
"And you are always alone in this great house?" he asked, to change the subject.