his evening?"

"If you like," she agreed simply, "but somehow I believe that I would
rather wait. Look at mother's eye, roving around the table. Give me my
gloves, please, Hugh. Don't be long."

Thomson moved his chair next to his host's Geraldine's father, Admiral
Sir Seymour Conyers, was a very garrulous old gentleman with fixed ideas
about everything, a little deaf and exceedingly fond of conversation.
He proceeded to give his prospective son-in-law a detailed lecture
concerning the mismanagement of the field hospitals at the front, and
having disposed of that subject, he opened a broadside attack upon
the Admiralty. The rest of the men showed indications of breaking into
little groups. Ralph Conyers and Granet were sitting side by side,
engrossed in conversation. More than once Thomson glanced towards them.

"Wish I understood more about naval affairs," Granet sighed. "I'm a
perfect ass at any one's job but my own. I can't see how you can deal
with submarines at all. The beggars can stay under the water as long as
they like, they just pop up and show their heads, and if they don't like
the look of anything near, down they go again. I don't see how you can
get at them, any way."

The young sailor smiled in a somewhat superior manner.

"We've a few ideas left still which the Germans haven't mopped up," he
declared.

"Personally," the Admiral observed, joining in the conversation, "I
consider the submarine danger the greatest to which this country has
yet been exposed. No one but a nation of pirates, of ferocious and
conscienceless huns, could have inaugurated such a campaign."

"Good for you, dad!" his son exclaimed. "They're a rotten lot of
beggars, of course, although some of them have behaved rather decently.
There's one thing," he added, sipping his port, "there isn't a job in
the world I'd sooner take on than submarine hunting."

"Every one to his taste," Granet remarked good-humouredly. "Give me
my own company at my back, my artillery well posted, my reserves in
position, the enemy not too strongly entrenched, and our dear old
Colonel's voice shouting 'At them, boys!' That's my idea of a scrap."

There was a little murmur of sympathy. Ralph Conyers, however, his cigar
in the corner of his mouth, smiled imperturbably.

"Sounds all right," he admitted, "but for sheer excitement give me a
misty morning, the bows of a forty-knot destroyer cutting the sea into
diamonds, decks cleared for action, and old Di