Put at ease by the commissary’s conduct toward her, Janice entered eagerly into the gaiety with which the army beguiled the tedium of winter quarters.  Dislike of Clowes precluded Andre and Mobray from coming to the house, but they saw much of the maiden elsewhere.  She and Peggy Chew had been made known to each other by Andre early in the British occupation, and they promptly established the warm friendship that girls of their age so easily form, and spent many hours together.  The two captains were quick to discover that the Chew house was a pleasant one, and became almost as constant visitors there as Janice herself.  At Andre’s suggestion the painting lessons were resumed, with Miss Chew as an additional pupil, and he undertook to teach them French as well; the music, too, was revived for Mobray’s benefit, though now more often as a trio or quartette; and many other pleasures were shared in common.  Both young officers were deeply concerned in the series of plays for which the theatre was being made ready; and the girls not merely heard them rehearse their respective parts, but with scissors and needles helped to make costumes for the amateur actors.

“Oh!” sighed Janice one day, after hearing Mobray through his lines in “The Deuce is in Him,” “I’d give a finger but to see it played.”

“See it!” exclaimed the baronet.  “Of course you’ll see it.”

“They say there ’s a great demand for places,” demurred Peggy.

“Have no fear as to that,” said Andre.  “Do you think I’ve risked my neck painting the curtain and scenery, and worked myself thin over it generally, not to get what I deserve in return.  My name was next down after Sir William’s for a box, and in it such beauty shall be exhibited that ’t is likely we poor Thespians will get not so much as a look from the exquisites of the pit.”

“Lack-a-day!” grieved Janice, “mommy will never hear of my going to see a play.  I’ve not so much as dared to tell her that I’m helping you.”

“Devil seize me, but you shall attend, if it takes a provost guard to do it,” predicted Mobray.

Neither the protests nor prayers of the baronet, however, served to gain Mrs. Meredith’s consent that her daughter should enter what she called “The Devil’s Pit,” but what he could not bring to pass the commissary did.

“I have bespoke a box for the first performance at the theatre,” Lord Clowes announced at dinner one evening, “and bid ye all as my guests.”

“’T is a sinful place, to which I will never lend my countenance,” said Mrs. Meredith, with such promptness as to suggest a forestalling of her husband and daughter.

The commissary bowed his head in apparent acquiescence, but when he and the squire were left to their wine he recurred to the matter.

“I look to ye, Meredith,” he said, “to overcome your wife’s absurd whimsey.”

“’T is useless to argue with Matilda when her mind ’s made up,” answered the husband, dejectedly.  “That I have learned time and again.”