“It’s so very nice of you to take the trouble,” she said, in her charming way, when he had made his most urgent representations.  “But really it’s much better for me to be with my husband here.  I stayed at Shamkura just as long as I could possibly bear it, and then I just had to come back here.  I don’t think I shall get ill—­really.  And if I do”—­she made a little foreign gesture of the hands—­“I’ll nurse myself.”

As Merryon had foretold, it was useless to argue with her.  She dismissed all argument with airy unreason.  But yet the colonel could not find it in his heart to be angry with her.  He was very angry with Merryon, so angry that for a whole fortnight he scarcely spoke to him.

But when the end of the fortnight came, and with it the first break in the rains, little Mrs. Merryon went smiling forth and returned his call.

“Are you still being cross with Billikins?” she asked him, while her hand lay engagingly in his.  “Because it’s really not his fault, you know.  If he sent me to Kamchatka, I should still come back.”

“You wouldn’t if you belonged to me,” said Colonel Davenant, with a grudging smile.

She laughed and shook her head.  “Perhaps I shouldn’t—­not unless I loved you as dearly as I love Billikins.  But I think you needn’t be cross about it.  I’m quite well.  If you don’t believe me, you can look at my tongue.”

She shot it out impudently, still laughing.  And the colonel suddenly and paternally patted her cheek.

“You’re a very naughty girl,” he said.  “But I suppose we shall have to make the best of you.  Only, for Heaven’s sake, don’t go and get ill on the quiet!  If you begin to feel queer, send for the doctor at the outset!”

He abandoned his attitude of disapproval towards Merryon after that interview, realizing possibly its injustice.  He even declared in a letter to his wife that Mrs. Merryon was an engaging chit, with a will of her own that threatened to rule them all!  Mrs. Davenant pursed her lips somewhat over the assertion, and remarked that Major Merryon’s wife was plainly more at home with men than women.  Captain Silvester was so openly out of temper over her absence that it was evident she had been “leading him on with utter heartlessness,” and now, it seemed, she meant to have the whole mess at her beck and call.

As a matter of fact, Puck saw much more of the mess than she desired.  It became the fashion among the younger officers to drop into the Merryons’ bungalow at the end of the evening.  Amusements were scarce, and Puck was a vigorous antidote to boredom.  She always sparkled in society, and she was too sweet-natured to snub “the boys,” as she called them.  The smile of welcome was ever ready on her little, thin white face, the quick jest on her nimble tongue.

“We mustn’t be piggy just because we are happy,” she said to her husband once.  “How are they to know we are having our honeymoon?” And then she nestled close to him, whispering, “It’s quite the best honeymoon any woman ever had.”