“I mean that, Larry Holiday.  Elinor and I were kid sweethearts.  We used to swear we were going to get married when we grew up.  That was when she was eight and I a man of twelve or so.  I gave her the locket which made some of the trouble as a sort of hostage for the future.  We called her Ruth in those days.  It was her own fancy to change it to Elinor later.  She thought it more grown up and dignified I remember.  Then I went back to England to school.  I didn’t see her again until we were both grown up and then I married her best friend with her blessing and approval.  But that is another story.  Just now I am trying to tell you that I am ready to congratulate my cousin with all my heart if it happens that you want to marry her as your brother seems to think.”

“There is no doubt about what I want,” said Larry grimly.  “Whether it is what she wants is another matter.  We haven’t been exactly in a position to discuss marriage.”

“I understand.  I’m beastly sorry to have been such an infernal dog in the manger unwittingly.  The only thing I can do to make, up is to give my blessing and wish you best of luck in your wooing.  Shall we shake on it, Larry Holiday, and on the friendship I hope you and I are going to have?”

And with a cordial man to man grip there was cemented a friendship which was to last as long as they both lived.

To relate briefly the links of the story some of which Larry Holiday now heard as the car sped over the smooth, frost hardened roads which the open winter had left unusually snowless and clean.  Geoffrey Annersley had been going his careless, happy go lucky way as an Oxford undergraduate when the sudden firing of a far off shot had startled the world and made war the one inevitable fact.  The young man had enlisted promptly and had been in practically continuous service of one sort or another ever since.  He had gone through desperate fighting, been four times wounded, and was now at last definitely eliminated from active service by a semi-paralyzed leg, the result of his last visit to “Blighty.”  He had been invalided the previous spring and had been sent to Australia on a recruiting mission.  Here he had renewed his acquaintance with his cousins whom he had not seen for years and promptly fell in love with and married pretty Nancy Hallinger, his cousin Elinor’s chum.

The speedy wooing accomplished as well as the recruiting job which was dispatched equally expeditiously and thoroughly Geoffrey prepared to return to France to get in some more good work against the Huns while his wife planned to enter Red Cross service as a nurse for which she had been in training for some time.  Roderick had entered the Australian air service and was already in Flanders where he had the reputation of being one of the youngest and most reckless aviators flying which was saying considerable.

It was imperative that some arrangement be made for Elinor who obviously could not be left alone in Sydney.  It was decided in family conclave that she should go to America and accept the often proffered hospitality of her aunt for a time at least.  A cable to this effect had been dispatched to Mrs. Wright which as later appeared never reached that lady as she was already on her way to England and died there shortly after.