Sir Anthony nodded at me, rubbed his hands, and turned to his wife.

“That’s just what I was saying, Edith.”

“My dear, that is just what I was trying to make you understand.”

Neither of the two dear things had said, or given the other to understand, anything of the kind.  But you see they had come in their own quaint married way to an agreement and were now receptive of commonsense.

“The motor ambulance is a sound idea,” said Sir Anthony, rubbing his chin between thumb and forefinger.

“So is the hospital train,” said Lady Fenimore.

What an idiot I was to suggest these alternatives!  I looked at my watch.  It was getting late.  Hosea, like a silly child, is afraid of the dark.  He just stands still and shivers at the night, and the more he is belaboured the more he shivers, standing stock-still with ears thrown back and front legs thrown forward.  As I can’t get out and pull, I’m at the mercy of Hosea.  And he knows it.  Since the mount of Balaam, there was never such an intelligent idiot of an ass.

“What do you say?” asked Sir Anthony.  “Ambulance or train?”

“Donkey carriage,” said I.  “This very moment minute.”

I left them and trotted away homewards.

Just as I had turned a bend of the chestnut avenue near the Park gates, I came upon a couple of familiar figures—­familiar, that is to say, individually, but startlingly unfamiliar in conjunction.  They were a young man and girl, Randall Holmes and Phyllis Gedge.  Randall had concluded a distinguished undergraduate career at Oxford last summer.  He was a man of birth, position, and, to a certain extent, of fortune.  Phyllis Gedge was the daughter, the pretty and attractive daughter, of Daniel Gedge, the socialistic builder who did not hold with war.  What did young Randall mean by walking in the dark with his arm round Phyllis’s waist?  Of course as soon as he heard the click-clack of Hosea’s hoofs he whipped his arm away; but I had already caught him.  They tried to look mighty unconcerned as I pulled up.  I took off my hat politely to the lady and held out my hand to the young man.

“Good evening, Randall,” said I.  “I haven’t seen you for ages.”

He was a tall, clean-limbed, clear-featured boy, with black hair, which though not long, yet lacked the military trimness befitting the heads of young men at the present moment.  He murmured something about being busy.

“It will do you good to take a night off,” I said; “drop in after dinner and smoke a pipe with an old friend.”

I smiled, bowed again politely, whipped up Hosea and trotted off.  I wondered whether he would come.  He had said:  “Delighted, I’m sure,” but he had not looked delighted.  Very possibly he regarded me as a meddlesome, gossiping old tom-cat.  Perhaps for that reason he would deem it wise to adopt a propitiatory attitude.  Perhaps also he retained a certain affectionate respect for me, seeing that