"You remember when Under-Instructor Davis took Mr. Durrant for an Air Beano all the way to Upavon, Mr. Sherbrand? Flares burning ’alfway through the night, and pore me!—new to the Flying then—wasn’t I, Mr. Sherbrand?—going from one fit of astericks into another, and running out to meet Durrant, when he dropped down calmly ’Ome at four in the mornin’, with my hair all untidy and hangin’ about me—" Patrine swiftly put up a hand to assure herself that her own tawny coils were securely fastened—"for all the world like an Indian Squawk." "Wives had their feelings, it was only to be expected," said Mrs. Durrant. Mothers had also theirs, and, that was natural too! Patrine found the idea of her own maternal relationship to Bawne so firmly fixed in the mind of Mrs. Durrant, it was barely worth the trouble to endeavour to explain it away. Mrs. Durrant had none of her own, worse luck! but here, just coming with the salad and some fried potatoes, was Mr. Durrant’s married niece, Ellen Agnes, and nobody knew better what it was to lose a darling child. Ellen Agnes, wan-eyed, anæmic, slipshod, and overworked, supported the statement. Only in April it ’ad ’appened, and Ellen Agnes ’ad never ’eld ’er ’ead up properly since. And little Elbert the ’ealthiest of children. Rising three and never a nillness till the pewmonia carried ’im orf. ’Ad only ’ad ’im phortographed three days before it ’appened! with ’is lovely little limbs and body naked, sitting on a fur rug, the blessed dear! Ellen Agnes not appearing to recognise any connecting link between the nude pose and the pneumonia, Patrine suppressed the obvious suggestion. Both women meant well, but their talkative sympathy oppressed her. She imagined how, when Sherbrand ate alone, the stout aunt and the thin niece would hover round his table, assailing his ears with their Cockney voices, making their common, vulgar comments on the happenings of the day. Perhaps her disrelish showed, for the kind women presently slackened their attentions. There was nothing then to divert Sherbrand’s attention from his guest, beyond the undeniable attractions of the hastily spread board. So they ate the pie, all of it. Patrine cried, in frank astonishment at the evaporation of her second plateful: "But I am a wolf or something. No! Not even salad. What must you think of me? Crying my eyes out one minute and stodging pigeon-pie the next! Do the rest of the friends you feed here behave as badly as that?" Sherbrand returned, ignoring the mention of other guests: "Now, what should I think? Nothing but that you wanted something to buck you, and I was pretty ravenous myself. It was pretty parky up there at 10,000." He answered to her question how high that was: "Why, comparatively, you might imagine it about nine times as high as the top of St. Paul’s Cross from the level of the ground."