"Yez-it is tout ce qu'il y a de plus chic, is it not?" Octavia, fortunately, was out of hearing.

Mark's summons to appear in court, to answer for his crimes, was for the Tuesday after Easter, but in the mean time the scandal hatched at Maddalena broke into disgraceful life. One of the customs of these queer childish Maltese is to re-enact the race of the two disciples to the Tomb on Easter morning. Peter and the Other Disciple start from St Paul's Bay, and run to Valetta, and, as the Gospel says: They both ran together, and the other disciple did outrun Peter." But, alas! Maddalena Fort had got hold of the man who was to be Peter, and had trained him and fed him up in a way far beyond the means of the unsuspecting Other Disciple; and when Easter Day came, Peter, the trained man of Maddalena, refused to be outstripped, and upset all history by arriving first! The Other Disciple followed later, footsore and breathless, as well as outraged in all his religious feelings!

Yes. We need not have feared that Mark would find Malta dull.

Mark's "trial" took place so early in the morning that we could not get ourselves to Valetta in time for it. We met after it, and refreshed ourselves with several ices. No doubt those ices are also made from goats' cream, but,

VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCCI.

as with the soda-water, we don't inquire, and can only hope that the microbe, being a fever one, succumbs in the freezing pro

cess.

The peculiar "law" which Mark had broken seemed to have no punishment attached to it, only an "admonition." This was gravely delivered to Mark in Italian, the evidence of the policeman having been given in Maltese. The Capitano had been Mark's bestman for the performance, and Octavia naturally considered it was his presence and wisdom alone which had saved Mark from a noisome dungeon in Corrodino. It certainly was only through him that any of us had the least idea what it had all been about, as Mark knew no word of either of the languages the case was heard in.

He said he was only one of a procession of poor Maltese cart-drivers, all getting their daily "admonition" administered to them for riding, as they habitually do, on the shaft.

I asked the Capitano if the country people understood Italian.

Oh, whatever it is, it won't be dismal," Mark cheerfully responded.

Octavia firmly refused to countenance the idea, as she felt responsible for him to his mother. I did not worry about that: the Service was his father and his mother nowadays, and capable of managing him better than most parents, but my own insignificant existence had some importance to myself. Octavia, the Capitano, and I went back to Sliema by dghaisa, right from the Grand Harbour and round by Elmo Fort-a lengthy but delightful way of doing when the weather is calm, as it gene

rally was after the middle of April. Mark said he had business in Valetta, and stayed there. What his business was became apparent after lunch, when he turned up at Strada Ittori with a motor-car and a grin of triumph from ear to ear!

"I got this old 'bus from a fellow at the Marsa, and now we're going to Birzebbugia, all of us, Co and Co."

The Navy early teaches the art of managing men (and women, as the greater includes the less!), and Octavia and I found our firm refusals a mere verbal accompaniment to getting ourselves packed in! But the car was not managed quite so easily as we were, and refused to start. Mark turned and pushed and probed every part of its anatomy with a complete disregard of possible consequences, and when he did manage to start it he was nearly run down, for he had left the gear in! Fortunately, the brake was also more or less on, so Mark, quite unperturbed, vaulted in over Octavia's knees, and proceeded to steer with complete sangfroid, as though that were the usual way of starting a car. The fourth seat must have been occupied by our Guardian Angels-a bit crowded for them perhaps, but easier than keeping up with Mark's driving by their own wing-power. We reached the fourth gear in the comparatively open roads near Sliema, and never left it again through all the mazes of wall

lined roads and narrow village streets, till we reached Birzebbugia.

"Do you know how to stop, Mark?" I gasped, as the footboard ground against the wall as we turned a corner.

Oh, I'll find out all right," cheerily answered the driver. "I stopped at Ittori by jamming on the brakes, but this time I'll try cutting off the petrol if the brakes won't do." I did not feel entirely reassured. When we reached Birzebbugia, our arrival at the hotel was as drunken-looking as the name of the place sounds. The entrance to the hotel grounds comes very unexpectedly, at the top of a steep hill down to the sea, and our fate seemed sealed to that of the Gadarene swine; but with that complete nerve, and lack of nerves, which characterises the young of both Services, Mark wheeled the car in on two wheels, and one gatepost, and tore twice round the yard while while the petrol was giving out and the brakes getting in. The hotel staff must have imagined themselves involved in a cinematograph production. Tea on the balcony overlooking the bay was very reviving after this, and we would have enjoyed it more but for the prospect of getting home, or not getting home, again, as Mark and the Fates might decree.

Lieutenant Joynson was there with a friend, and, having seen our spectacular arrival, came up to congratulate us. Mark

66

Oh, I got it through the help of another fellow," was the explanation, and nothing more was said.

When we started to leaveat least tried to start-every one in the hotel, staff included, assembled to watch. Mr Joynson was preparing his dogcart to start too, so as to pick up the fragments, he explained.

As Mark was burrowing under the bonnet, to find out if the car had died of heart-failure, an officious servant lifted the seat to see if the petrol was turned on (it wasn't!), and finding a large garment in his way, pulled it out. He looked at it consideringly, while the unconscious Mark still innocently inspected the car's in'ards, and seeing it was a naval lieutenant's long overcoat, he took it across to Mr Joynson and asked if it was his. Mr Joynson looked at the two gold stripes, and then called out to Mark—

"I fancy this belongs to 'the friend' that helped you to get the car, and he seems

Mark looked astonishingly pink-one might almost add guilty and said, "Thanks awfully" so fervently for the returned coat that I was rather mystified.

When we did get startednow the petrol was turned on again-I asked Mark why it would have been so awkward if Mr Joynson had taken the coat-no one could say it was cold, and a snottie is not gene

About the middle of May life had again become one long summer holiday. It was getting rather hot for sight-seeing, except the insides of churches, and that I left to Octavia and Captain Castellani. The Capitano had no special interest in either architecture, archæology, or religion, I am pretty sure, but he had found them a firm ground to have in common with Octavia! He had been so used to women whom he never attempted to talk to, but merely made love to, that Octavia was a new and intriguing type to him. He used to confide in me, if Octavia were not there: "I say to you, 'You are beautiful, you are charming,' and you laugh -what is that you say?'ole-ry-eet'-but Miss Fanning, she is offensée-how you say-boored!' But she is ver' pleased to talk about

things so much less importance, like religion, and so we talk ..!" This with a sigh that expressed his view of the waste of time.

Every country, he supposed, had its unattractive women, who must needs fall back on being intellectual, but for an obviously beautiful one to prefer platonics to flirtation was an altogether new experience for him. I could have told him it all came to the same in the end, whether they talked religion or dynamics! That Octavia, although twenty-eight, had been so busy being independent of men, that she knew nothing of them. She was like a caddis-worm, who covers itself with a protecting house of tiny sticks and stones or anything at hand; but give her time, and she would emerge from her 'ologies and theories, and be a fully-winged and more

gracious creature, quite ready to bask in the sunshine of open admiration and love!

I did not tell him all this, because he might have tried to break down Octavia's little house of pretences before she was ready to live without it.

Thank goodness I have never underrated the educational value of flirtations in all their forms! The Intellectual: when you lend each other Browning and Meredith and the latest problem novel, and then talk about yourselves for hours by way of criticising the books! The Jolly: where no sentiment is to be seen, only an urge to learn some game, hitherto loathed, but now practised with assiduity under his tutorship! And, of course, the Soulful, which is all subjunctive: "If I were," "If you would," "If we might be," "If they had been "-ad infinitum!

Of course, there is such a thing as sheer friendship, in spite of all the scorners, and I know enough about it to recognise it when I do meet it, as, for instance, between Bobbie and me. Of course, he puts in little bits of the other, partly for fun-more likely from habit; but, as far as I am concerned, I feel about him exactly as I would about a brother, if I had one, and it is all very pleasant and unexacting.

On the 16th May I met Mr Joynson in Valetta, who told me Bobbie's ship would be back that day. I remember the date, I suppose, because it was just a few days before the

Governor's garden-party at San Antonio, to which we had been bidden-through Mr Joynson, I suppose. I telephoned to Octavia that I would lunch in the Club, for it is always interesting to see the big naval ships come into the Grand Harbour, and I might as well sit on the Barracca in the afternoon as anywhere else. The Barracca was a more delightful place than ever now, for the gardens were full of flowers, and the walls covered with the pale mauve plumbago.

Al

On the Barracca one looks down on the ships as from a balcony, but the distance is just great enough to be tantalising; for although a reasonably loud shout would, no doubt, make the officers on deck look up, it is just as well not to give one, and without it they all look the same. though I could not tell which white cap and pair of foreshortened legs belonged to Bobbie, the whole ship seemed to be just him; for he might be doing any bit of the work for all I knew, and so the resultant stately skilled performance seemed all his doing. I think it is a pity women don't oftener see their menfolk really at their work—not merely coming back tired and dull after it, or probably holding forth on subjects they know less about. I am sure that's why all women love a uniform, and to see their manbelonging actually in command of other men is very gratifying. I dare say the head of the