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  She shook her head so vigorously that her dusky ringlets danced under the brim of her hat. ‘No! That is what Grandpapa said, and he made my aunt take me to Bath, and I met a great many people, and went to the Assemblies, in spite of not having been presented yet, and it didn’t put Neil out of my head at all. And if you think, sir, that perhaps I was not a success, I must tell you that you are quite mistaken!’

  ‘I feel sure you were a success,’ he replied, smiling.

  ‘I was,’ she said candidly. ‘I had hundreds of compliments paid me, and I stood up for every dance. So now I know all about being fashionable, and I would liefer by far live in a tent with Neil.’

  He found her at once childish and strangely mature, and was touched. He said gently: ‘Perhaps you would, and perhaps you will, one day, live in a tent with Neil. But you are very young to be married, Amanda, and it would be better to wait for a year or two.’

  ‘I have already waited for two years, for I have been betrothed to Neil since I was fifteen, secretly! And I am not too young to be married, because Neil knows an officer in the 95th who is married to a Spanish lady who is much younger than I am!’

  There did not seem to be anything to say in reply to this. Sir Gareth, who was beginning to perceive that the task of protecting Amanda was one fraught with difficulty, shifted his ground. ‘Very well, but if you are not at this moment eloping, which, I own, seems, in the absence of your Brigade-Major, to be unlikely – I wish you will tell me what you hope to gain by running away from your home, and wandering about the countryside in this very unconventional manner?’

  ‘That,’ said Amanda, with pride, ‘is Strategy, sir.’

  ‘I am afraid,’ said Sir Gareth apologetically, ‘that the explanation leaves me no wiser than I was before.’

  ‘Well, it may be Tactics,’ she said cautiously. ‘Though that is when you move troops in the presence of the enemy, and, of course, the enemy isn’t present. I find it very confusing to distinguish between the two things, and it is a pity Neil isn’t here, for you may depend upon it he knows exactly, and he could explain it to you.’

  ‘Yes, I begin to think it is a thousand pities he isn’t here, even though he were not so obliging as to explain it to me,’ agreed Sir Gareth.

  Amanda, who had been frowning over the problem, said: ‘I believe the properest expression is a plan of campaign! That’s what it is! How stupid of me! I am not at all surprised you shouldn’t have understood what I meant.’

  ‘I still don’t understand. What is your plan of campaign?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you, sir,’ said Amanda, not displeased to describe what she plainly considered to be a masterpiece of generalship. ‘When Neil said that on no account would he take me to Gretna Green, naturally I was obliged to think of a different scheme. And although I daresay it seems to you pretty poor-spirited of him, he is not poor-spirited, and I don’t at all wish you to think such a thing of him.’

  ‘Set your mind at rest on that head: I don’t!’ replied Sir Gareth.

  ‘And it isn’t because he doesn’t wish to marry me, for he does, and he says he is going to marry me, even if we have to wait until I am of age,’ she assured him earnestly. She added, after a darkling pause: ‘But, I must say, it has me quite in a puzzle to understand how he comes to be a very good soldier, which everyone says he truly is, when he seems to have not the least notion of Surprise, or Attack. Do you suppose it comes from fighting under Lord Wellington’s command, and being obliged to retreat so frequently?’

  ‘Very likely,’ responded Sir Gareth, his countenance admirably composed. ‘Is your flight in the nature of an attack?’

  ‘Yes, of course it is. For it was vital that something should be done immediately! At any moment now, Neil may be sent back to rejoin the regiment, and if he doesn’t take me with him I may not see him again for years, and years, and years! And it is of no avail to argue with Grandpapa, or to coax him, because all he does is to say that I shall soon forget about it, and to give me stupid presents!’

  At this point, any faint vision, which Sir Gareth might have had, of a tyrannical grandparent, left him. He said: ‘I quite expected to hear that he had locked you in your room.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ she assured him. ‘Aunt Adelaide did so once, when I was quite a little girl, but I climbed out of the window, into the big elm tree, and Grandpapa said I was never to be locked in again. And, in a way, I am sorry for it, because I daresay if I had been locked in Neil would have consented to an elopement. But, of course, when all Grandpapa would do was to give me things, and talk about my presentation, and send me to parties in Bath, Neil couldn’t perceive that there was the least need to rescue me. He said that we must be patient. But I have seen what comes of being patient,’ Amanda said, with a boding look, ‘and I have no opinion of it.’

  ‘What does come of it?’ enquired Sir Gareth.

  ‘Nothing!’ she answered. ‘I daresay you might not credit it, but Aunt Adelaide fell in love when she was quite young, like me, and just the same thing happened! Grandpapa said she was too young, and also that he wished her to marry a man of fortune, so she made up her mind to be patient, and then what do you think?’

  ‘I haven’t the remotest guess: do tell me!’

  ‘Why, after only two years the Suitor married an odious female with ten thousand pounds and they had seven children, and he was carried off by an inflammation of the lungs! And none of it would have happened if only Aunt Adelaide had had a grain of resolution! So I have quite made up my mind not to cultivate resignation, because although people praise one for it I don’t consider that it serves any useful purpose. If Aunt Adelaide had been married to the Suitor, he wouldn’t have contracted an inflammation of the lungs, because she would have taken better care of him. And if Neil is wounded again, I am going to nurse him, and I shall not permit anyone, even Lord Wellington himself, to put him on one of those dreadful spring-wagons, which was harder to bear than all the rest, he told me!’

  ‘I’m sure it must have been. But none of this explains why you ran away from your home,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Oh, I did that to compel Grandpapa to consent to my marriage!’ she said brightly. ‘And also to show him that I am not a child, but, on the contrary, very well able to take care of myself. He thinks that because I am accustomed to be waited on I shouldn’t know how to go on if I had to live in billets, or perhaps a tent, which is absurd, because I should. Only it never answers to tell Grandpapa anything: one is obliged to show him. Well, he didn’t believe I should climb out of the window when I was locked into my room, though I warned him how it would be. At first, I thought I would refuse to eat anything until he gave his consent – in fact, I did refuse, one day, only I became so excessively hungry that I thought perhaps it wasn’t such a famous scheme, particularly when it so happened that there were buttered lobsters for dinner, and a Floating Island pudding.’

  ‘Naturally you couldn’t forgo two such dishes,’ he said sympathetically.

  ‘Well, no,’ she confessed. ‘Besides, it wouldn’t have shown Grandpapa that I am truly able to take care of myself, which is, I think, important.’

  ‘Very true. One can’t help feeling that it might have put just the opposite notion into his head. Now tell me why you think that running away from him will answer the purpose!’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t: not that part of it, precisely. That will just give him a fright.’

  ‘I have no doubt it will, but are you quite sure you wish to frighten him?’

  ‘No, but it is quite his own fault for being so unkind and obstinate. Besides, it is my campaign, and you can’t consider the sensibilities of the enemy when you are planning a campaign!’ she said reasonably. ‘You can have no notion how difficult it was to decide what was best to be done. In fact, I was almost at a stand when, by the luckiest chance, I saw an advertisement in the Morning Post. It sai