“It makes me think of one of those colonies of ants you buy at Gamage’s in a glass case at Christmas,” murmured Vic. “I had one once, but the glass got broken and they all got out and got lost.... I suppose they all know what they’re supposed to be doing, but they’re awfully like those ants pushing about every which way----” “They’ll get out soon. But I hope they’ll not get lost,” said Honor, with a glimpse of the chill foreboding. “Do you know, Nor, those boys walk quite differently since they got their kilts,” said Vic, as they watched their two down below. “I know. They fling out their toes with a kind of free kick as though the world was at their feet. See that man--he does it beautifully. He’s a sergeant or something. He looks as if he’d done it all his life.” “It’s rather like the way cats walk on wet grass,” said Vic. And then, suddenly, sharp words of command down below,--the floor cleared as if by magic of all but the draft for the front, and they formed up in two long lines, and a General came along and inspected them and said a few cheery words to them. The girls thrilled at the general silence, the concentration on the draft. They watched their two absorbedly, and to both it came right home with almost overwhelming force that the parting that was upon them might well be the final one. They would march proudly away with their swinging kilts and skirling pipes, and then--they might never see them again. “Look at their faces!” whispered Honor. “Are those two really our boys?” “They’re ours right enough. That’s their fighting-face. They’re splendid.” More words of command, they formed up in fours, the big doors swung open, the pipes shrilled a merry tune, and with heavy tread of ordered feet they passed out into the gray November day. “Are they going?” gasped Honor, and turned to follow. “Only to Central Hall,” said a Second Battalion man who was leaning on the rail alongside them. “They’re to come back here for lunch presently. They’ll go on later,--that is if they go on to-day at all. Somebody was saying the transports aren’t ready.” “They say there’s a German submarine dodging about the Channel waiting for them,” said another next to him. “This place breeds a fresh rumour every five minutes on an average. You’re never sure of anything till it’s happened.” So the girls waited hopefully, and criticised the setting of the tables down below by obviously ’prentice hands; and in due course they were rewarded by the draft marching in again, without kits this time, and they all sat down at the tables and ate and drank in apparently jovial humour.