The Little Warrior

e Juggernauts. Belated trains clanked in, glad to get home, while others, less fortunate, crept reluctantly out through the blackness and disappeared into an inferno of detonating fog-signa

eat red orange, but now all was darkness and discomfort again, blended with that o

ment made it imperative that he remain where he was instead of sitting, as he would much have preferred to sit, in one of the waiting-rooms. It would be a disaster if his mother should get out of the train

in the recesses of his heart, was afraid of his mother. There are men-and Derek Underhill was one of them-who never wholly emerge from the nursery. They may put away childish things and rise in the world to affluence and success, but the hand that rocked their cradle still rules their lives. As a boy, Derek had always been firmly co

improbable. When a man writes to inform his mother, who is wintering on the Riviera, that he has become engaged to be married, the natural course for her to pursue, if she approves of the s

been said, nothing had even been hinted, but he was perfectly aware that his marriage was a matter regarding which Lady Underhill had always assumed that she was to be co

volent approval of Lady Underhill was concerned, have been an altogether different matter had his choice fallen upon one of those damsels whose characters, personality, and ancestry she knew. Daughters of solid and useful men; sisters of rising young politicians like himself;

Freddie Rooke was advancing towards him, the friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Like some loving dog, who, ordered home, sneaks softly on through alleys and by-ways, peeping round corners and crouc

hope you don't mind Ronny and Algy breezing along, too. The fact is, I was in the deuce of a funk-your jolly old mater always rather paralyzes my nerve-centers, you know-so I roped them in. Met 'em in Piccadilly, groping about for the club, and conscripted 'em both, they very decently consenting. We all toddl

g!" sai

y nothing!

ages," said Freddie, "and then leg it. We'

into painful chan

said Algy, "of t

the comforting presence of his two allies could altogether sustain him in this ordeal. But he pulled himself together with a

!" said Ron

ot!" said