“Can’t we come too, Mummy?” asked Evelyn.

“You might take us?” pleaded Primula.

The children came running into Heron Baynet’s garage where Patricia—in smock and wash-leather gloves—stood tinkering under the open bonnet of her car.

“No, you can’t. And you’re both very wicked children. How on earth did you manage to get here? Without your hats, too!”

She stood there, the faulty sparking-plug in her hand, half-smiling, half-frowning at the two pinafored figures.

“Well,” said Evelyn proudly. “It was my idea. Miss Merridew left us alone. So I said to Primula, ‘Let’s just rush downstairs, open the front-door, and go to Mummy. It’s only at the end of the road.’ ...”

“We did keep on the pavements,” remarked Primula airily; and added: “Even if you don’t take us with you, you’ll have to drive us as far as the front-door.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort”—Patricia knew how easily children grow to dominate their parents—“I shall telephone Miss Merridew to fetch you, and you’ll both do half-an-hour’s extra lessons.”

“Oh, Mummy,” began Evelyn: but her mother had already stepped to the house-telephone; was ringing up for their governess,—who appeared, flustered and hatless, a few minutes afterwards; dragged the culprits back to their multiplication table.

“That woman,” thought Patricia as she returned the cleaned plug to its socket, “is a fool, an untrained fool and an expensive fool. I shall have to take on the kids’ education myself.”

She peeled off smock and wash-leather gloves; arranged toque and furs at the cracked mirror over the shelf whereon Heron Baynet’s chauffeur (long since enlisted) had kept his “spares”; cranked up; and backed the car steadily out through the folding doors....

Peter had been gone nearly a fortnight. He had written her—his usual scribbles. Reading between the lines of them, her heart forgave him its wounds. But now, she too had her work to do, little time for musing.

She thought of that work as her firm hands steered the Crossley towards Endsleigh Gardens. She had been her father’s unpaying guest long enough. The sale of the Lowndes Square house made her homeless; and she was not the type of woman who could be without a home. She needed her own things about her; needed the bother and the fret and the pleasure of housekeeping. And London, with its darkness and its air-raids, was no place for children.

So Patricia’s imagination had taken unto itself a “little place in the country”; a place to which Peter could come back—on leave if his luck held, to recover if he were wounded. For that other contingency, his death and her own widowhood, even Patricia’s stout heart refused to face....

She pulled up at the entrance to the hospital; jumped down from the driving-seat; slammed door behind her; ran lightly up the steps.

“Captain Gordon?” she inquired at the porter’s office.

“He’s in the drawing-room, Miss,” the orderly smiled back at her. (She had been there nearly every day for five months; and the orderly knew her name perfectly. But she looked young, and she looked attractive, and she always came to see the same officer. So he called her “Miss” instead of “Madam.” In days gone by, when he had been a skate-fitter at Olympia, the little trick had earned Private Johnson, R.A.M.C.,^[14] many tips!)

Patricia walked swiftly through the hall—(the Endsleigh Gardens Hospital had been a hotel before the war)—into the ornate and over-furnished drawing room; found Francis alone.

He had been “up” only three weeks; rose to greet her with difficulty, supporting himself first on the arms of his chair, then on two rubber-shod sticks.

“Morning, Pat,” he said. “I’m all ready, you see.”

The months of illness had told on him, graven lines of pain on his temples, at the corners of his mouth. His hair, too, had grayed a little above close-set ears. His eyes seemed to have grown darker. But his clothes—he wore mufti in sublime defiance of Regulations—were immaculate as ever.

“They’ll never let you out of the door in that get-up,” pronounced Patricia—eyeing the “Barnard” motoring-cap, the blue-and-black old Etonian tie, the loose fitting brown over-coat.

“Wonderful what one can do in this place if one only smiles at the sisters, bullies one’s doctor, and gives half-crowns to the orderlies,” laughed Francis.

He shuffled awkwardly across the impeding carpet, through the swing-doors Patricia opened for him. Prout emerged from the basement by the elevator-shaft; and together the two helped the invalid down the steps into the car.

Patricia swung the crank-shaft; climbed to her seat; switched gear-lever into “first”; let in the clutch.

Watching them as they glided out of sight, round the corner of the square, Prout’s thoughts turned to bygone and merrier days. “Poor Mister Francis,” muttered the old man. “And him that was always so fond of dancing....”