Act Five, on account of the language set down, and the managers--slaves

to convention--were unable to meet her views by deleting the sanguinary incident. Langford took his people off to find their car in the garage, and we exchanged signals of farewell when they reached the small quay. I imagine the four of us left on the yacht were perfectly content. The sailor had the prospect of returning home, and later, of an hour or two at the Turk's Head; Katherine, meeting her sweetheart's relatives, had been favourably received by them; Edward had fallen in love with someone about three times his own age; I had been treated with no sign of patronage.

It was indeed the sort of day which, coming in those strenuous and exacting times, helped one to cheer up, and to live on, and to preserve hope. Without being in any way indifferent to the war, folk discovered it useful now and again to become detached from it, and to escape grim fears, and needless multiplication. (So far as multiplication was concerned, dwellers in town were the great sufferers. Occasionally when I had to run up to London from Greenwich, and the news of some disaster at sea happened to be announced on the countless placards, then, in finishing the journey, the vague notion in my mind was not that we had lost one cruiser, but that the entire British navy had gone down.) On the voyage back, Katherine and her young Lieutenant held hands, and forgot, for a space, the troubles of our banking system, and the complications of military strategy. The climax to a happy period came when Mrs. Hillier met us on the sea front near to the lifeboat shed.

"Aunt Weston must be told something at once," she declared, when the young people began to give an account of their experiences. "Something Colonel Edgington ascertained this afternoon. Her nephew has obtained a commission in a regiment stationed not far from here. He is coming home to do work at musketry practice."

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Katherine, "I ask you to give three cheers for Lieutenant Millwood."

It is possible the Aldeburgh people thought we were slightly off our heads. If so, the Aldeburgh people were correct.

* * * * *

I travelled to town that evening in a crowded compartment of the class named on my ticket, and whilst my fellow passengers slept, I kept awake and enjoyed my dreams. Young Langford, in seeing me off at the station, had explained to me that although his aunt and her husband had regarded himself and Katherine with approval, he felt by no means certain that this view would be shared by his father; to avoid a row and to escape anything like a dispute with a parent whom he had always obeyed, he proposed, in the case of being ordered out, to come up to London and take Katherine to a registrar's office. Langford hoped he might count upon me, both for help and for discretion.

"You know she is only a clerk in a bank?" I suggested. "Not sure whether you have been told. We don't want misunderstandings."

"The dear girl has told me everything," he declared, earnestly. "And it will be a most tremendous comfort to me when I'm out there, to know that her days are occupied, and that she has a rare, good friend in you!"

My open-eyed dreams regarded my nephew Herbert. The war had, so far as he was concerned, shuffled the cards afresh, and by the hour the train reached Liverpool Street, I had settled comfortably in my mind how the new hand was to be played.

"Miss Muriel shan't have him!" I promised myself.