Free Treasured Brides Collection by Grace Livingston Hill

as he could speak, he said, “You can take me down to that little telegraph office, if you please, and drop me there. Then nobody will think anything about it.”
    “I’ll take you to the telegraph office if you’ll be good and put that coat on right, and button it,” said Mary Amber commandingly. She had him in the car now, and she knew she could go so fast he could not get out. “But I won’t stop there until you promise me, on your honor as a soldier, that you won’t get out or make any more trouble about my taking you back to Miss Marilla.”
    The soldier looked very balky indeed, and his firm mouth got itself into fine shape again till he looked into Mary Amber’s eyes and saw the saucy, beautiful lights there. And then he broke down laughing.
    “Well, you’ve caught me by guile,” he said, “and I guess we’re about even. I’ll go back and make my adieus myself to Miss Marilla.”
    A little curve of satisfaction settled about Mary Amber’s mouth.
    “Put that coat on, please,” she said, and the soldier put it on gratefully. He was beginning to feel a reaction from his battle with Mary Amber, and now that he was defeated, the coat seemed most desirable.
    “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if you would tell me who you really are?” asked Mary Amber. “It might save some embarrassment.”
    “Why, certainly!” said the soldier in surprise. “It hadn’t occurred to me, that’s all. I’m Lyman Gage, of Chicago.” He named also his rank and regiment in the army. Then, looking at her curiously, he said, hesitating, “I’m—perfectly respectable, you know. I don’t really make a practice of going around sponging on unprotected ladies.”
    Her cheeks flamed a gorgeous scarlet, and her eyes looked rebuked.
    “I suppose I ought to apologize,” she said. “But really, you know, it looked rather peculiar to me—” She stopped suddenly, for he was seized with another fit of coughing, which had so shrill a sound that she involuntarily turned to look at him with anxious eyes.
    “I s’pose it did look strange,” he managed to say at last, “but, you know, that day when I came in I didn’t care a hang.” He dropped his head wearily against the car and closed his eyes for just a second, as if keeping them open was a great effort.
    “You’re all in now,” she said sharply. “And you’re shivering. You ought to be in bed this minute.” Her voice held deep concern. “Where is that telegraph office? We’ll just leave word for them to forward the message if it hasn’t come, and then we’ll fly back.”
    “Oh, I must wait for that message,” he said, straightening up with a hoarse effort and opening his eyes sharply. “It is really imperative.”
    She stopped the car in front of the telegraph office. The little operator, sensing a romance, scuttled out the door with an envelope in her hand and a different look on her face from the one she had worn when she went to her lunch. To tell the truth, she had not had much faith in that soldier nor in the message he had sent “collect.” She hadn’t believed any answer would come, or at least any favorable one.
    Now she hurried across the pavement to the car, studying Mary Amber’s red tam as she talked and wondering whether she couldn’t make one like it out of the red lining of an old army cape she had.
    “Yer message’s come,” she announced affably. “Come just after I got back. An’ I got yer check all made out fer yah. You sign here. See? Got anybody to ‘dentify yah? ‘Tain’t necessary, see? I c’n waive identification.”
    “I can identify him,” spoke up Mary Amber with cool dignity, and the soldier looked at her wonderingly. That was a very different tone from the one she had used when she came after him. After all, what did Mary Amber know about him?
    He looked at the check half wonderingly, as if it were not real. His head felt very strange. The words of the message seemed all jumbled. He crumpled it in his