y
blankets of woven porcupine quills (seemingly) the ends of which
tickled his nose and scratched his face. He had been very cold and
sweatingly hot, furiously hungry with no meal to satisfy his healthy
appetite, madly thirsty and no long drink attainable; unable to
sleep for three nights at a time owing to the noise of the
bombardment; surfeited with horrible smells; sickened with butchery;
shocked at his own failures to retrieve life, yet encouraged by an
isolated victory, here and there, over death and disablement. So the
never-before-appreciated comfort of his Park Crescent home filled
him with intense gratitude to Linda.

Had he known, he owed some of his acknowledgment to Mrs. Adams; who
had worked both hard and tactfully in her undefined position of
lady's-maid-housekeeper-companion. But naturally he didn't know,
though he praised his wife warmly for her charity of soul in taking
pity on the poor little woman and her two children. He could only
give the slightest news about Bertie, but said he was a sort of
jack-of-all-trades for the Y.M.C.A. As to Vivie--"that Miss
Warren"--he answered his wife's questions neither with the glowering
taciturnity nor suspicious loquacity of former times. "Miss Warren?
Vivie? I fancy she's still at Brussels, but there is no chance of
finding out. There is a story that her mother is dead. P'raps now
they'll let her come away. She must be jolly well sick of Brussels
by now. When I last heard of Adams he was still hoping to get into
touch with her. I hope he won't take any risks. She's a clever woman
and I dare say can take care of herself. I hope we shall all meet
again when the War is over."

He seemed very pleased to hear of the new Conciliation Bill, the
general agreement all round on the Suffrage question and the
enlargement of the electorate. He had always told Linda it was bound
to come. "And after it has come, dearie, you mark my words: things
will go on pretty much as before." But his real, intense, absorbing
interest lay in the new experiments he was about to make in bone
grafting and cartilage replacing, and the functions of the pituitary
body and the interstitial glands. To carry these out adequately the
Zoological Society had accumulated troops of monkeys and baboons. At
a certain depot in Camden Town dogs were kept for his purposes. And
the vaults and upper floors of the Royal College of Surgeons were at
Rossiter's disposal, with Professor Keith to co-operate. Never h