Mrs. Sand glanced meaningly at a point on the floor, with lifted eyebrows, then at her officer, and finally hid a badly-disciplined smile behind her baby’s head.  When she looked back again Laura had flushed all over, and an embarrassment stood between them, which she felt was absurd.

“My!” she said,—­scruples in breaking it could hardly perhaps have been expected of her,—­“you do look nice when you’ve got a little colour.  But if you can’t see that it’s you that brings him to the meetin’s, you must be blind, that’s all.”

Captain Filbert’s confusion was dispelled, as by the wave of a wand.

“Then I hope I may go on bringing him,” she said.  “He couldn’t come to a better place.”

“Well, you’ll have to be careful,” said Mrs. Sand, as if with severe intent.  “But I don’t say discourage him; I wouldn’t say that.  You may be an influence for good.  It may be His will that you should be pleasant to the young man.  But don’t make free with him.  Don’t, on any account, have him put his arm round your waist.”

“Nobody has done that to me,” Laura replied austerely, “since I left Putney, and so long as I am in the Army nobody will.  Not that Mr. Lindsay” (she blushed again) “would ever want to.  The class he belongs to look down on it.”

“The class he belongs to do worse things.  The Army doesn’t look down on it.  It’s only nature, and the Army believes in working with nature.  If it was Mr. Harris I wouldn’t say a word—­he marches under the Lord’s banner.”

Captain Filbert listened without confusion; her expression was even slightly complacent.

“Well,” she said, “I told Mr. Harris last evening that the Lieutenant and I couldn’t go on giving him so much of our time, and he seemed to think he’d been keeping company with me.  I had to tell him I hadn’t any such idea.”

“Did he seem much disappointed?”

“He said he thought he would have more of the feeling of belonging to the Army if he was married in it; but I told him he would have to learn to walk alone.”

Mrs. Sand speculatively bit her lips.

“I don’t know but what you did right,” she said.  “By the grace of God you converted him, and he hadn’t ought to ask more of you.  But I have a kind of feeling that Mr. Lindsay ’ll be harder to convince.”

“I daresay.”

“It would be splendid, though, to garner him in.  He might be willing to march with us and subscribe half his pay, like poor Captain Corby, of the Queen’s army, did in Rangoon.”

“He might be proud to.”

“We must all try and bring sin home to him,” Mrs. Sand remarked with rising energy; “and don’t you go saying anything to him hastily.  If he’s gone on you—­”

“Oh Ensign! let us hope he is thinking of higher things!  Let us both pray for him.  Let Captain Sand pray for him too, and I’ll ask the Lieutenant.  Now that she’s got Miss Rozario safe into the kingdom, I don’t think she has any special object.”