“Don’t stop,” she whispered. “Oh, the plainer you make it that you don’t want them, the more sport they think it,” interrupted the girl with a laugh.!

She took from among the litter a faded photograph and handed it to Joan. “Odd,” she said. “I’ve just turned it out.” “Isn’t it rather dangerous work?” she asked. She felt it was a footling question even as she asked it. Her brain had become stodgy.

“It makes me laugh,” he was saying, “all this newspaper talk. Every nation, properly led, fights bravely. It is the male instinct. Women go into hysterics about it, because it has not been given them. I have the Croix de Guerre with all three leaves, and I haven’t half the courage of my dog, who weighs twelve kilos, and would face a regiment by himself. Why, a game cock has got more than the best of us. It’s the man who doesn’t think, who can’t think, who has the most courage—who imagines nothing, but just goes forward with his head down, like a bull. There is, of course, a real courage. When you are by yourself, and have to do something in cold blood. But the courage required for rushing forward, shouting and yelling with a lot of other fellows—why, it would take a hundred times more pluck to turn back.” “What about the other people irritating us?” suggested Joan. “No,” answered Joan. “I’m a Lancashire lass.”