THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
on the stairs, and, since he neither saw nor answered her, carried a wild tale abroad that brought his mother knocking at the door.
"Anything happened , dear? Harper said she thought you were n't—"
"No; it 's nothing. I 'm all right, mummy. Please don't bother."
He did not recognise his own voice, but that was a small matter beside what he was considering. Obviously, most obviously, the whole coincidence was crazy lunacy. He proved it to the satisfaction of Major George Cottar, who was going up to town to-morrow to hear a lecture on the supply of ammunition in the field; and having so proved it, the soul and brain and heart and body of Georgie cried joyously: "That 's the Lily Lock girl—the Lost Continent girl—the Thirty-Mile Ride girl—the Brushwood girl! I know her!"
He waked, stiff and cramped in his chair, to reconsider the situation by sunlight, when it did not appear normal. But a man must eat, and he went to breakfast, his heart between his teeth, holding himself severely in hand.
"Late, as usual," said the mother. "'My boy, Miss Lacy."
A tall girl in black raised her eyes to his, and Georgie 's life training deserted him—just as soon as he realised that she did not know. He stared coolly and critically. There was the abundant black hair, growing in a widow's peak, turned back from the forehead, with that peculiar ripple over the right ear; there were the grey eyes set a little close together; the short upper lip, reso-
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