“It will do him good,” answered Mrs. Phillips; “getting away from them all for an hour or two. I don’t see much of him myself.” She had been busy at her machine when Joan had entered; and a pile of delicate white work lay folded on a chair beside her.!

Her little drummer played less and less frequently to her as the months passed by. It didn’t seem to be the war he had looked forward to. The illustrated papers continued to picture it as a sort of glorified picnic where smiling young men lolled luxuriously in cosy dug-outs, reading their favourite paper. By curious coincidence, it generally happened to be the journal publishing the photograph. Occasionally, it appeared, they came across the enemy, who then put up both hands and shouted “Kamerad.” But the weary, wounded men she talked to told another story. He stopped abruptly with a sudden tightening of the lips. Joan followed his eyes. Mrs. Phillips had swallowed the smoke and was giggling and spluttering by turns. The yellow ostrich feather had worked itself loose and was rocking to and fro as if in a fit of laughter of its own.

The discussion was brief. “Then I’ll send your agent the contract to-morrow,” Joan overheard him say a minute later. “Why must you preach?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem to pay you.” There was a curious smile about the girl’s lips as she caught Joan’s eye. Joan wondered if she could be the wife of the Member of Parliament who occupied the rooms below her in Cowley Street. His name, so the landlady had told her, was Phillips. She put the suggestion in a whisper to Flossie.