“Julie, you’re beyond me.  If you weren’t so strong I’d smack you, but as it is, give me another kiss. And introduce us.  There may as well be propriety somewhere.”

They sorted themselves out and sat down.  “What do you think of my rig?” demanded Dr. Melville (as Julie had introduced her).

“Toppin’,” said Julie critically.  “But what in the world is it?  Chiefly Waac, with three pukka stars and an R.A.M.C. badge.  Teanie, how dare you do it?”

“I dare do all that doth become a woman,” she answered complacently.  “And it doth, doth it not?  Skirt’s a trifle short, perhaps,” she added, sticking out a leg and examining the effect critically, “but upper’s eminently satisfactory.”

Julie leaned over and prodded her.  “No corsets?” she inquired innocently.

“Julie, you’re positively indecent.  You must have tamed your padre completely.  You’re not married by any chance?” she added suddenly.

Julie screamed with laughter.  “Oh, Teanie, you’ll be the death of me,” she said at last.  “Solomon, are we married?  I don’t think so, Teanie.  There’s never no telling these days, but I can’t recollect it.”

“Well, it strikes me you ought to be if you’re jogging round the country together,” said the other, her eyes twinkling.  “But if you’re not, take warning, padre.  A girl that talks about corsets in public isn’t respectable, especially as she doesn’t wear them herself, except in the evening, for the sake of other things.  Or she used not to.  But perhaps you know?”

Peter tried to look comfortable, but he was completely out of his depth.  He finished his drink with a happy inspiration, and ordered another.  That down, he began to feel more capable of entering into the spirit of these two.  They were the sort he wanted to know, both of them, women about as different from those he had met as they could possibly be.

Another man dropped in after a while, so the talk became general.  The atmosphere was very free and easy, bantering, careless, jolly, and Peter expanded in it.  Julie led them all.  She was never at a loss, and apparently had no care in the world.

The two girls and Peter went together to dinner and sat at the same table.  They talked a good deal together, and Peter gathered they had come to know each other at a hospital in England.  They were full of reminiscences.

“Do you remember ducking Pockett?” Teanie asked Julie.

“Lor’, I should think I do!  Tell Peter.  He won’t be horrified unless you go into details.  If I cough, Solomon, you’re to change the subject.  Carry on, Teanie.”

“Well, Pockett was a nurse of about the last limit.  She was fearfully snobby, which nobody of that name ought to be, and she ruled her pros. with a rod of iron.  I expect that was good for them, and I say nothing as to that, but she was a beast to the boys.  We had some poor chaps in who were damnably knocked about, and one could do a lot for them in roundabout ways.  Regulations are made to be broken in some cases, I think.  But she was a holy terror.  Sooner than call her, the boys would endure anything, but some of us knew, and once she caught Julie here...”