"
"Oh," Miss Macroyd protested, "this is consulting the weakness of our
sex."
"In the fury of the onset we'll forget it," Verrian reassured her.
"Do you think you really will, Mr. Verrian?" she asked. "What is all our
athletic training to go for if you do?"
Mrs. Westangle read on:
"The terms of capitulation can be arranged on the ground, whether the
castle is carried or the assailing party are made prisoners by its
defenders."
"Hopeless captivity in either case!" Bushwick lamented.
"Isn't it rather academic?" Miss Macroyd asked of Verrian, in a low
voice.
"I'm afraid, rather," he owned.
"But why are you so serious?" she pursued.
"Am I serious?" he retorted, with a trace of exasperation; and she
laughed.
Their parley was quite lost in the clamor which raged up and down the
table till Mrs. Westangle ended it by saying, "There's no obligation on
any one to take part in the hostilities. There won't be any
conscription; it's a free fight that will be open to everybody." She
folded the paper she had been reading from and put it in her lap, in
default of a pocket. She went on impromptu:
"You needn't trouble about building the fort, Mr. Bushwick. I've had the
farmer and his men working at the castle since daybreak, and the ladies
will find it all ready for them, when they're ready to defend it, down in
the meadow beyond the edge of the birch-lot.
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