to look at. All about the room were
splendid palms in pots; from giants twenty feet high, to lesser ones
the graceful leaves of which could just catch the eye of a tired man
in bed--fresh from the grim ugliness of the trenches. It was the
palms you saw as you came in--not the beds here and there among them.

A good many of the patients were up this afternoon, for this was a
ward for semi-convalescents. Not all were fully dressed: they moved
about in dressing-gowns, or lay on the sofas, or played games at the
little tables. One man was in uniform: Major Hunt, who sat in a big
chair near his bed, and from time to time cast impatient glances at
the door.

"Wish we weren't going to lose you, Major," said a tall man in a
purple dressing-gown, who came up the ward with wonderful swiftness,
considering that he was on crutches. "But I expect you're keen to
go."

"Oh, yes; though I'll miss this place." Major Hunt cast an
appreciative glance down the beautiful room. "It has been great luck
to be here; there are not many hospitals like this in England.
But--well, even if home is only a beastly little flat in Bloomsbury it
_is_ home, and I shall be glad to get back to my wife and the
youngsters. I miss the kids horribly."

"Yes, one does," said the other.

"I daresay I'll find them something of a crowd on wet days, when they
can't get out," said Major Hunt, laughing. "The flat is small, and my
wretched nerves are all on edge. But I want them badly, for all that.
And it's rough on my wife to be so much alone. She has led a kind of
wandering life since war broke out--sometimes we've been able to have
the kids with us, but not always." He stretched himself wearily.
"Gad! how glad I'll be when the Boche is hammered and we're able to
have a decent home again!"

"We're all like that," said the other man. "I've seen my youngsters
twice in the last year."

"Yes, you're worse off than I am," said Major Hunt. He looked
impatiently towards the door, fidgeting. "I wish Stella would come."

But when a nurse brought him a summons presently, and he said good-bye
to the ward and went eagerly down to the ground-floor (in an electric
lift worked by an earl's daughter in a very neat uniform), it was not
his wife who awaited him in a little white-and-gold sitting-room, but
a very tall man, looking slightly apologetic.

"Your wife is perfectly well," said David Linton, checking the quick
inquiry that rose to the soldier's lip