ker's voice was almost scornful. "Why, mother.
Kedgeree here would have got his First Eleven cap this term if we'd
stayed, and even he----"

A small midshipman with remarkable steel-grey eyes, who had not
hitherto spoken much, shook his head emphatically and flushed at
hearing his nickname pronounced in open conversation ashore. "We were
treated like kids there," he explained. "But now----" He jerked his
head towards the north with that unfailing sense of the cardinal points
of the compass which a seaman acquires in earliest youth, or not at
all. Somewhere in that direction the German fleet was presumed to be
skulking. "It's different," he ended a little lamely.

Suddenly the son leaned forward and pressed his mother's knee under the
table. A tall, sinewy Engineer Commander was walking across the
_foyer_ on his way to the billiard room.

"There, mother, that's old Beggs. He had our term at Osborne. Did you
see his nose? . . . Captain of England!" . . . The speaker broke off
and lifted his head, listening.

Through the doorway opening on to the sea-front there drifted a faint
sound, the silvery note of a distant bugle.

"Hush!" said one of the others, raising a warning hand. "Listen!"

3

At the window of one of the detached houses in the residential part of
the town a small Naval Cadet stood with his nose flattened against the
window-pane.

"I say, Betty," he ejaculated presently, "they're giving leave to the
Fleet. I can see crowds of officers coming ashore."

His sister continued to knit industriously. "Well, I don't suppose any
of them are coming here. You needn't get so excited."

Her brother watched the uniformed figures filing along the distant road
from the landing place. "I hope this war goes on for another couple of
years," he sighed.

"Joe! You mustn't say such dreadful things. You don't know what
you're talking about."

"That's all jolly fine, but you haven't got to do another year at
Osborne---- I say, Betty, one of them _is_ coming here! How jolly
exciting! He's coming up the avenue now. He's got red hair. . . . I
believe--yes, it's--what was the name of that Lieutenant at Jack's
wedding, d'you remember? The funny man. He made you giggle all the
time."

For a moment the knitting appeared to demand his sister's undivided
attention; she bent her head over it. "That was a long time
ago--before I put my hair up. I'm sure I didn't giggle either. Oh,
yes, I think