"Isn't that Old Jack choking? I know his choke. What does he come out for in weather like this? What does he mean? Send him back.... No, send him in here." The nurse puts in a headshake as protest. But for all that, Sally finds, when she returns, that the two veterans are contending together against their two enemies, bronchitis and asthma, with the Intelligence Department sadly interrupted, and the enemy in possession of all the advantageous points. "He oughtn't to try to talk," says Rosalind. "But he will." She and Sally and the nurse sit on in the fog-bound front room. The gas-lights have no heart in them, and each wears a nimbus. Rosalind wishes Gerry would return, aloud. Sally is buoyant about him; _he's_ all right, trust _him_! What about the everlasting young beggar? "I persuaded Mrs. Kindred," says Sally. "And we looked outside for him, and he'd gone." "Fancy a woman being named Kindred!" "When people are so genteel one can believe anything! But what do you think the boy's name is?... Chancellorship! Isn't that queer? She knows him--says he's always about in the neighbourhood. He sleeps in the mews behind Great Toff House." Her mother isn't listening. She rises for a moment to hear what she may of how the talk in the next room goes on; and then, coming back, says again she wishes Gerry was safe indoors, and Sally again says, "Oh, _he's_ all right!" The confidence these two have in one another makes them a couple apart--a sort of league. What Mrs. Fenwick heard a scrap of in the next room would have been, but for the alarums and excursions of the two enemies aforementioned, a consecutive conversation as follows: "You're gettin' round, Colonel?" "A deal better, Major. I want to speak to _you_." "Fire away, old Cockywax! You remember Hopkins?--Cartwright Hopkins--man with a squint--at Mooltan--expression of his, 'Old Cockywax.'" "I remember him. Died of typhoid at Burrampore. Now you listen to me, old chap, and don't talk--you only make yourself cough." "It's only the dam fog. _I'm_ all right." "Well, shut up. That child in the next room--it's her I want to talk about. You're the only man, as far as I know, that knows the story. She doesn't. She's not to be told." "Mum's the word, sir. Always say nothin', that's my motto. Penderfield's daughter at Khopal--at least, he was her father. One dam father's as good as another, as long as he goes to the devil." This may be a kind of disclaimer of inheritance as a factor to be reckoned with, an obscure suggestion that human parentage is without influence on character. It is not well expressed. "Listen to me, Roper. You know the story. That's the only man I can't say God forgive him to. God forgive _me_, but I can't." "Devil take me if I can!... Yes, it's all right. They're all in the next room...." "But the woman was worse. She's living, you know...." "I know--shinin' light--purifying society--that's her game! I'd purify _her_, if I had my way."