Bill looked hastily through his store and shook his head. "Look 'ere, miss," he said ingratiatingly. "Can't you let us 'ave the tickets, as a special case like? We're on leave from the front, an' we 'aven't 'ad no time to get our money changed yet. If you don't let us 'ave the tickets we'll 'ave to walk. An' it is good money, even if it is French." The damsel was softened but doubtful. "I'll ask father," she said. "Father" turned out to be the station-master. He listened to their story with manifest incredulity, and fingered the French notes with skepticism, but finally agreed to accept them in payment of the fare. But he fixed a rate of exchange which assured that the railway company--or possibly himself--would gain by the transaction an enormous and unearned increment. There was nothing for it but to pay up, and any personal comments they might have wished to make were cut short by the arrival of the train. They found an empty compartment and composed themselves joyfully though illegally with their boots on the seats. Bill brooded darkly for a time on the affair of the station-master, till the bitterness of his thoughts forced utterance. "If Eustace ..." he began. But Alf, worn out by his varied emotions, was already asleep. CHAPTER XVI MRS. GRANT'S DIPLOMACY A week later Private Bill Grant--late Mr. William Montmorency of Denmore Manor--was approaching the parental roof of his friend, Alf Higgins--_ex_ Wentworth. Bill neither looked nor felt happy. Life during the period since the evacuation of Denmore had been profitless and stale. True, he had plenty of money in his pocket for a man in his position; but his trouble was that his position no longer satisfied him. His home, after the glaring magnificence of Denmore, seemed cramped and tawdry. The public-houses of Hackney, once palaces of delight to be dreamed about from exile in a foreign land, were squalid and stuffy. The liquid they purveyed was--by contrast with the full-bodied brew supplied by Eustace--tasteless and flat. The barmaids compared most unfavorably with his lost Lucy in beauty, in their manner of dressing and in their attitude towards himself. Lucy, for instance, had never advised him to boil his head. Bill was, in fact, thoroughly miserable; and he saw no prospect whatever of any alleviation of his trouble until his leave was over. He did not see the faintest possibility of obtaining the Button from Alf, until they were back in France--and he was living in anticipation of that glorious moment. He had no very clear idea why he was going to see Alf now. Just at present, he and his mate were in that state of acute mutual irritation known as "being on one another's nerves." Alf was still obstinately determined never again to make use of the Button, and disliked any reference to the subject; and Bill, impelled by some malignant demon, seemed unable to keep veiled allusions to it out of his conversation.