“Some of the ‘Grass and Asphalt’ sketches are wonders; some not so good.  I am going to try out ‘Doggy’ if I can find a poodle with enough intelligence to support me.  But you need not have been so mysterious, Doc, about your ‘young amateur writer who seems to have some talent.’  Did you think I would not know it was David?  Why, bless your dear, silly heart, I told him some of those stories myself.  But how does he get a chance to write them?  Is he back on this side?  Or is he invalided?  Or what?  Tell me.  I want to know about him.  You do not have to worry about my—­well, my infatuation for him, any more.  He was a pretty boy, though, wasn’t he?  But I have seen too many of that kind in the picture game.  I’m spoiled for them.  How I would love to smear some of their pretty, smirky faces!  They give me a queer feeling in my breakfast.  Excuse me:  I forgot I was a lady.  But don’t say ‘pretty’ to me any more.  I’m through.  At that, you were all wrong about Buddy.  He was a lot decenter than you thought:  only he was brought up wrong.  Give him my love as one pal to another.  I hope he don’t come back a He-ro.  I’m offen he-roes, too.  Excuse again!”

Wars and exiles alike come to an end in time.  And in time our two wanderers returned, but Mary first, David having been sent into Germany with the Army of Occupation.  Modest announcements in the theatrical columns informed an indifferent theater-going world that Miss Marie Courtenay, an actress new to Broadway, was to play the ingenue part in the latest comedy by a highly popular dramatist.  Immediately upon the production, the theater-going world ceased to be indifferent to the new actress; in fact, it went into one of its occasional furores about her.  Not that she was in any way a great genius, but she had a certain indefinable and winningly individual quality.  The critics discussed it gravely and at length, differing argumentatively as to its nature and constitution.  I could have given them a hint.  My predictions regarding the ancestral potencies of the monkey-face were being abundantly justified.

No announcements, even of the most modest description, heralded the arrival of Sergeant Major (if you please!) David Berthelin upon his native shores.  He came at once to Our Square and tackled the Little Red Doctor.

“Where is she?” he asked.

The Little Red Doctor assumed an air of incredulous surprise.  “Have you still got that bee in your bonnet?” said he.

“Where is she?” repeated the Weeping Scion.

Maneuvering for time and counsel, the Little Red Doctor took him to see the Bonnie Lassie and they sent for me.  We beheld a new and reconstituted David.  He was no longer pretty.  The soft brown eyes were less soft and more alert, and there were little wrinkles at their corners.  He had broadened a foot or so.  That pinky-delicate complexion by which he had, in earlier and easier days, set obvious store, was brownish and looked hardened.  The Cupid’s-bow of his mouth had straightened out.  High on one cheekbone was a not unsightly scar.  His manner was unassertive, but eminently self-respecting, and me, whom aforetime he had stigmatized as a “white-whiskered old goat,” he now addressed as “Sir.”