"Pretend you don't know him," was her parting advice, tinged with
the reckless courage of the non-combatant.
The next moment the overtures of an affably disposed gentleman
were being received by Clovis with a "silent-upon-a-peak-in-
Darien" stare which denoted an absence of all previous
acquaintance with the object scrutinized.
"I expect you don't know me with my moustache," said the new-
comer; "I've only grown it during the last two months."
"On the contrary," said Clovis, "the moustache is the only thing
about you that seemed familiar to me. I felt certain that I had
met it somewhere before."
"My name is Tarrington," resumed the candidate for recognition.
"A very useful kind of name," said Clovis; "with a name of that
sort no one would blame you if you did nothing in particular
heroic or remarkable, would they? And yet if you were to raise a
troop of light horse in a moment of national emergency,
'Tarrington's Light Horse' would sound quite appropriate and
pulse-quickening; whereas if you were called Spoopin, for
instance, the thing would be out of the question. No one, even in
a moment of national emergency, could possibly belong to Spoopin's
Horse.
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