d Mrs. Rankin. She had dined with the Colonel.

Charlotte didn't care. She _liked_ that beastliness, that hostility of
theirs. It was something you could put your back against; it braced her
to defiance. It brought her closer to John, to John and Gwinnie, and
shut them in together more securely. Sutton she was not quite so sure
about. Through all their depression he seemed to stand apart somehow by
himself in a profounder discontent. "There are only four of us," he
said; "we can't call ourselves a corps." You could see the way his mind
was working.

Then suddenly the atmosphere lifted at one point. Mrs. Rankin changed her
attitude to John. You could see her beautiful hawk's eyes pursuing him
about the room. When she found him in the corridors or on the stairs she
stopped him and chattered; under her breath because of the hushed wards.

He told Charlotte about it.

"That Mrs. Rankin seems inclined to be a bit too friendly."

"I haven't noticed it."

"Not with you. With Sutton and--and me."

"Well--"

"Well, I can't answer for Sutton, but I don't like it. That isn't what
we're out here for."

They were going into the messroom together towards dinner time. Mrs.
Rankin and Alice Bartrum were there alone, seated at their tables, ready.
Mrs. Rankin called out in her stressed, vibrating voice across the room:

"Mr. _Conway_, you people ought to come in with us."

"Why?"

"_Because_ there are only four of you and we're twelve. Sixteen's the
proper number for a unit. Alice, didn't I say, the minute I saw Mr.
Conway with that car of his, didn't I _say_ we ought to have him?"

"You did."

"Thanks. I'd rather take my orders from the Colonel."

"And _I'd_ rather take _mine_ from you than from McClane. Fancy coming
out at the head of a Field Ambulance looking like that. Tell you what,
Mr. Conway, if you'll join up with us I'll get the Colonel to make you
our commandant."

Alice Bartrum opened her shadowed eyes. "Trixie--you _can't_."

"Can't I? I can make the old boy do anything I like."

John stiffened. "You can't make me do anything you like, Mrs. Rankin.
You'd much better stick to McClane."

"What do any of us know about McClane?"

"What do you know about me?"

You could see how he hated her.

"I know you mean business."

"Doesn't he?"

"Don't ask me what he _means_."

She shrugged her shoulders violently. "Come over here and sit by me. I
want to talk to you. Seriously."

She had shifted her seat