twaddly tea-fights and carping at hard-worked generals
who were doing their best and a good best too. He and Linda did dine
occasionally with Honoria, but the latter felt she could not let
herself go about Vivie in the presence of Mrs. Rossiter and seemed
a little cold in manner.

Ordinarily, after working hard all day while the daylight lasted
they much preferred an evening of complete solitude. Rossiter's new
robustness of taste included love of a gramophone. Money being no
consideration with them, they acquired a tip-top one with
superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking
of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting
duets between violin and piano (_what_ human voice ever came up to a
good violin or violoncello?), racy comic songs, inspiriting two
steps, xylophone symphonies, and dreamy, sensuous waltzes. This
gramophone Linda learnt to work; and while Michael read voraciously
the works of Hunter, Hugh Owen Thomas, Stromeyer, Duchenne, Goodsir,
Wolff, and Redfern on bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage,
periosteum and osteogenesis--or, more often, Keith's compact and
lucid analysis of their experiments and conclusions--Linda let loose
in the scented air of a log fire these varied melodies which attuned
the mind to extraordinary perceptibility.

The little Adamses were allowed to steal in and listen, on condition
they never uttered a word to break the spell of Colonel Rossiter's
thoughts.

I think also Rossiter felt his wife had been unjustly snubbed by the
great ladies and the off-hand, harum-scarum young war-workers; so he
flatly declined to have any of them messing around his studio or
initiated into his research work. It was intimated that the Rossiter
Thursday afternoons of long ago would not be resumed until after the
peace. Linda therefore derived much consolation and satisfaction for
past injuries to her pride when Lady Vera--or Victoria--Freebooter
called one day just before Christmas and said "Oh--er--mother's let
our house till February and thinks we'd better--I mean the Marrybone
Guild of war-workers--meet at _your_ house instead"; and she,
Linda, had the opportunity of replying: "Oh, I'm sorry, _but_ It's
QUITE impossible. The Professor--I mean, Colonel Rossiter--and I are
so _very_ busy ... we are seeing _no_ one just now. Indeed we've
enlisted all the servants to help the Colonel in his work, so I
can't even offer you a cup of tea.... I must _