igh of contentment.

"You don't complain, Tommy," she retorted; "but you could buzz
yourself to blazes without getting me even to look up."

For fully a minute there was silence; Gladys Norman continued to
gaze down at the debris to which she had reduced her roll.

"No," she continued presently, "there is something else. I've
noticed the others; they're just the same." She paused, then
suddenly looking across at him she enquired, "What is loyalty,
Tommy?"

"Standing up and taking off your hat when they play 'God Save the
King,'" he replied glibly.

She laughed, and deftly flicked a bread pill she had just
manufactured, catching Thompson beneath the left eye and causing him
to blink violently.

"You're a funny old thing," she laughed. "You know quite well what I
mean, only you're too stupid to realise it. Look at the Innocent--
for him the Chief is the only man in all the world. Then there's
Tims. He'd get up in the middle of the night and drive the Chief to
blazes, and hang the petrol. Then there's you and me."

Thompson drew a cigarette-case from his pocket.

"I _think_ I know why it is," she said, nodding her pretty head
wisely. She paused, and as Thompson made no comment she continued:
"It's because he's human, warm flesh and blood."

"But when I'm warm flesh and blood," objected Thompson, with
corrugated brow, "you tell me not to be silly."

"Your idea of warmth, my dear man, was learnt on the upper reaches
of the Thames after dark," was the scathing retort.

"Yes, but----" he began, when she interrupted him.

"Look what he did for Miss Blair. Had her at the office and then--
then--looked after her."

"And afterwards got her a job," remarked Thompson. "But that's just
like the Chief," he added.

"Where did you meet him first, Tommy?" she enquired, as she leaned
forward slightly to light her cigarette at the match he held out to
her.

"In a bath," was the reply, as Thompson proceeded to light his own
cigarette.

"You're not a bit funny," she retorted.

"But it was," he persisted.

"Was what?"

"In a bath. He hadn't had one before and----"

"Not had a bath!" she cried. "If you try to pull my leg like that,
Tommy, you'll ladder my stockings."

"But I'm not," protested Thompson. "I met the Chief in a Turkish
bath, and he went into the hottest room and crumpled, so I looked
after him, and that's how I got to know him."

"Of course, you couldn't have happened to mention that it was a
_Turki