"I will tell mother," said Dora Glynde, purposely ignoring Arthur Agar, whose name was always dragged sooner or later into every conversation. "Fancy Jem in a helmet, or a turban, with his face blacked! All the same, if I were a man I should be a soldier. When does he go--to join his regiment?"
"Oh, almost at once."
The girl winced, quietly, between herself and the blind-cord.
"And in the meantime," she said lightly, "I suppose he is fully engaged in buying swords and guns and bomb-shells, or whatever the Goorkhas use in warfare."
"He is coming home to-morrow for Sunday," replied Jem Agar's stepmother absently. She was thinking of her own son, and therefore did not hear the quick sigh which was almost a gasp; did not note the sudden light in the girl's eyes.
Dora Glynde was rather a s
