ig guns, just now, Hammy; and chances and issues, and
results and risks."

The plume of fair hair fell back, clearing the candid grey eyes as Hammy
lifted up his face, confidently lisping:

"I don't quite fink I know what wesults and wisks are, but I'd like to
play wif the live men an' the big guns too sometimes ... if you didn't
want vem always?"

"We'll see about it, Hammy, when you're grown up."

"Good-bye, Mister Colonel. And I would lend you my beasts an' fings,
because I know you wouldn't bweak them?"

"See that Berta has her share in them meanwhile. Off with you, now!"

Later, in the seclusion of the connubial bedchamber, said Captain Bingo,
dressing for dinner, the last time for many months, as it was to prove:

"What do you suppose was the Chief's next move, after the engine and
tender got in, and the crowd hoorayed him back from the Railway Works? No
use your guessin', though. Even a woman wouldn't have expected to find him
playin' Noah's Ark in the coffee-room with the Mayor's two kids!"

"I like that!" said Lady Hannah meditatively, arranging the Pompadour
transformation, not apparently the worse for the candle-accident of the
previous night.

"Because you're a woman and sentimental," said her spouse, wrestling with
a cuff-link.

"No; because I am a woman whose instinct tells her that nothing will seem
too big for a man for whom nothing is too small. And--what an incident for
a paragraph!"

He grinned: "With headin's in thunderin' big capitals.... 'The Soldier
Hero Sports With A Babbling Babe.... The Defender Of British Prestige At
Gueldersdorp Puts In Half an Hour At Cat's-Cradle Ere The Armoured Train
Toddles Out With The B.S.A.P. To Give Beans To The Blooming Boer!'"

She darted at him, caught him by the lapels ... made him look at her.

"It's true? You really mean it? The ball begins?"

"Upon the honour of a henpecked husband--before daybreak to-morrow, you'll
hear the music."

She sparkled with delight.

"Oh, poor, unlucky, humdrum women at home in England, walking with the
shooters, or lolling in hammocks under trees, and trying to flirt with fat
City financiers or vapid young attaches of Legation! I shall take the
Irish mare, and borrow an orderly, and ride out to see a Real Action!"

His round pink face grew long. "The devil you will!"

"The devil I won't, you mean. Why, for what else under the sky did I come
out here but the glorious chance of War?" Her impatient foot tapped the