But presently he developed pneumonia in addition to the pleurisy, and the Doctor put a peremptory embargo on all war news, since it invariably sent his temperature up. Absolute lack of news, however, had just as bad an effect, and finally he was permitted to hear from day to day that things were going well, and all the papers were kept for him to read when he got better. They made much of the fresh loyal offers of help from India, and of the successful aeroplane raid on the Dusseldorf Zeppelin sheds, carefully withheld any hint of the sinking of the Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue, and the impudent quarter-of-an-hour’s bombardment of Madras by the lively Emden, and soothed him with assurances that France and Britain were splendidly holding their own along the Aisne, that Russia was forging ahead in Galicia, and that recruiting was quite up to expectations. In fact they played motherly censor to him with the already over-heavily censored news, and permitted nothing whatever of an upsetting nature to reach him; and of course they overdid it,--just as the other censor did. He grew suspicious of all this cotton-woolling, and at last insisted on Lois holding the paper before him each morning so that he might scan the head-lines. Then he indicated what he wanted read and there was no getting out of it. Dr Rhenius, appealed to, did his best to break him off it, but the result was disastrous. The Colonel’s temperature went up a degree and a half through suppressed indignation, and he had to be allowed his news. “Not a da-asht infant,” he murmured. “Can stand it--good or bad. Must know.” But the fever sapped his strength to such an extent that at times he lay so listless and apparently careless even of news that Auntie Mitt grew apprehensive. “I don’t like it,” she confined to Mrs Dare. “It’s so very unlike him. I would really be thankful to hear him swear a little.” “The fever has weakened him. Once the crisis is past he’ll begin to pick up again, and then we’ll tell him you want to hear him swear again.” “It’s not really that I want to hear him swear, you understand, my dear,” Auntie Mitt superfluously explained, “but that I wish he were well enough to do so.” “I know. I would like to hear him too.” To keep the house quiet Victoria was stopping with Honor at The Red House, which was quite to Noel and Gregor’s taste. They were still doing heavy route-marching almost every day, and on the off-days and Friday, which was pay-day, they mouched about Head-Quarters or put in a bit of drill in Hyde Park. The pay of three shillings a day--to cover travelling expenses and daily rations--was to Gregor a negligible matter. But to Noel, who had never earned a farthing in his life, it was uplifting. He was actually keeping himself--in cigarettes and amusements,--and in conjunction with Gregor even took the girls to a theatre now and again. It was a grand thing not to be dependent on anyone for his pocket-money, and it made him feel excessively manly.