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.