David laughed, and sat down again.

"You old humbug! Don't take up the tactful line, Bill. You weren't cut out for it."

66

That's as it may be," I said, relieved. Now what did you take that tabloid for?"

"Well-for my heart."

I looked at him, startled; and he nodded cheerfully.

The Scots firs overhead went on swaying and sighing, like surges of the sea. They have a music of their own it comes from somewhere far off, and sounds near, and goes far off again, like sea-waves running down a beach. I never hear that sound without thinking of David-my old pal.

His honest face was serious but untroubled, and his voice quite steady as he told me about his case.

and the great days we had seen; the days that had been so full of miseries and glories, of excitement and mortal weariness, of life and death.

"If I had gone out on one of these days," he said, "with Bromley at Le Cateau, or with Freddie Gray at Loos, why, it would have been a very shining and satisfactory way of going, of course; but do you know, Bill, I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I saw it out, for I have had some very good times since; and perhaps I shall have some more, since God is so very kind. Really there is no end to His kindness."

I asked him presently if his wife knew the state of his health?

"No, she doesn't," he said, and sighed. It was the only time he looked really worried. "You may think it's wrong not to let her know, but I simply couldn't stand being fussed over. It would be the end of all my peace; and you see I've made every arrangement for her."

When we went in we found the important lady herself seated in a comfortable chair with that child Lina, or Patsy, I should say, planted in front of her on a stool, listening to an impressive lecture, with her eyes as usual on the floor. Hilda was holding forth on the war-of all subjects!-or believed she was, for in reality she knew nothing about it.

But she dilated on the wickedness of Germans, and their countless crimes, their coward

66

ice and cruelty, and so forth, with a solemnity that would have befitted the recital of the Gospel Story " which she had tried to impress on the poor little heathen the evening before.

This kind of thing in a woman's voice is fairly sickening. I turned and went out, thinking as I went of some words I had read in the record of a truthful woman who, as a British subject married to a German, had been detained in Berlin during the fateful years of the war. The words were those of a young German officer home on leave for a few days in Berlin.

66 He said to me that he was longing to get back to the front, so as to have a little peace and quiet, where, as he said, there is not so much venomous hatred and vindictiveness against the enemy, and no incessant talk of cruelties, reprisals, &c." He added, "Out there we all do our duty, the enemy as well as ourselves; we obey the orders, and do what we are told, and have no time to think or feel all this horrible hatred and revenge." Pondering over these words I went to the garden.

I wanted a place to be quiet in, and I had taken a liking to that high garden - walk which had the dark yew-hedge on one side of it, and the border filled with late hardy chrysanthemums on the other.

These things never seem to me like real flowers; they are chilly and ornamental, their

VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCCI.

think her attitude of mind is perfectly natural and entirely right. I am an agnostic myself."

"With young people of your age and experience that is a very common phase," I said, with studied calm. All the same, she had given me a jar.

"My age is twenty-five," she remarked with dignity. "I have gained experience because I have worked, both inside a hospital and outside. I was a bad nurse, but a good ambulance driver. That was in France. I have been engaged to two men. One of them was killed, and the other I-exchanged. I have probably had more experience than you, in spite of your D.S.O. and the lions you have shot at in Africa. I suppose you call that experience."

"Experience is the name we all give to our mistakes," I began to say, "but-"

a facer. Some instinct told me that silence would not be the safest course here.

"Thank you very much for your confidence," I said. "Also for the information you have been kind enough to give me. You have provided me with something very interesting to think about."

"That's what I intended," she said, "to make you think. And now I will leave you alone to do it. If you find your thoughts turning towards the evening mail-train-well, the time-table is in the smokingroom, you know."

She actually laughed as she went away. I remained there speechless, like a shamefaced boy. To think of her having not only divined the attraction I was scarcely aware of, but also the impulse to flight, which was the first thing that followed it! She was uncanny, that girl. My own discom

"My last remark was not original, as I was just going to explain. Let us go back to your experience instead, so much more interesting and valuable. Are you sure there were only two men ? "

"Only two," she replied firmly. “I don't know if you are going to be the third. I like you fairly well, but you are only half in love with me, and I don't think you are perfectly aware even of that half."

She smiled. She was the very coolest thing. In all my life I never had to meet such

angry; but the next moment I was laughing myself. Not very heartily, perhaps. I believe I have a sense of humour; but this situation was not truly humorous, it was only disconcerting.

Presently round the end of the yew-hedge appeared Patsy, making her way to her "own house," that little brown summer-house to which she had laid claim. She walked in a peculiar quiet way, lifting her feet like no other child I have ever seen; she had almost a stealthy gait. Following her, but at a distance, came David's

little dog, Dandy. Patsy had no liking for Dandy, and he had none for her, but he watched her with anxiety till she began throwing pebbles from the gravel at him, so many and fast that he retired in high dudgeon. Then she seated herself; without book or toy or any amusement whatever, she simply took possession.

I remembered what Joey had said. "She can't work and she can't play. She's a changeling." I went on thinking of Joey. What business has any girl to look a man in the face and tell him these intimate things, and then go away laughing? If she had even blushed once, but I never saw Joey blush. She would have said she had nothing to blush for, There was nothing aggressive about the girl, nothing forward; she said things like this in a low rippling voice,

and looked at you with ever such a slight lift of her dark eyebrows, and somehow you couldn't call it by a hard name. I couldn't, at least. Everything about her was delicate, and small, and finished. But, my goodness! she was efficient.

David had told me that the last two years in Africa had made me almost "out of touch," as he called it. He spoke as if I were something Victorian. Well, of course, Joey was his cousin, and therefore in no way surprising to him. David was worth a dozen Joeys. Ah, dear old chap! I had come out to this terrace-walk on purpose to think about himif things were really so hopeless about his health, if nothing could be done for him?-and here I was already thinking of no one but myself and a girl with dark eyebrows who had laughed at me.

CHAPTER VII.

Lunch came upon us that day, as it does every day, whether the morning has contained tragedy or comedy; and after lunch something else came on us, in the shape of a children's party, specially ordained by Hilda for the benefit of Patsy.

Numbers of children arrived, bringing their elders along with them. They played rounders and hide-and-seek, and Tom Tiddler's ground, and the more games they played, the more

DONKEY RIDING.

mystified Patsy became, the more firmly she planted her feet and declined to move one step to join in these wild antics of her contemporaries. Any one might have seen that the child was bewildered, and considered them all to be a set of lunatics. But Hilda lost her temper, and upbraided Patsy so energetically that she made a bit of a scene, to the annoyance of poor David and the amusement of every one else.