"You told me something—you showed me the pink book with the pretty title, ’WEEP NO MORE MOTHERS’—wasn’t that the name? You’ve made up your mind? Does it cost the earth?" "Two hundred for patients of the superior class—_wohlgeboren_ clients. Half paid in advance! Stiff!—but to make sure of not suffering I’d plank a thou’! It’s a nightmare, and a Day-mare, that haunts me all the clock round. That’s why I’d change—and be Margot St. John again! That’s why I can’t whoop with joy when my friends tell me they’re going to be spliced!" Patrine got up. "Oh!—well! Perhaps I shall escape. After all—it’s a lottery!" "Not for big, splendid women like you. You were made to be a mother, Pat!" "_Don’t!_" She kissed Margot hastily and went to the door. "Stop!" Margot scrambled off the sofa. "You’ve forgotten the most important thing of all. Hasn’t ’Alan’ got a surname by any chance?" Patrine looked back over her shoulder with something of the old smile. "Rather! What do you think of Sherbrand?" "What do I think of Sherbrand? How odd! It’s Franky’s family name!" "Queer coincidence. But _my_ Sherbrand hasn’t any relatives in the Peerage!—or if he has, he hasn’t told me! I’ll butt you wise when I know him well enough to ask him about them. You see, the whole thing has been beautifully sudden!" "Bring him to lunch at the Club to-morrow. You’re not in mourning, and if you were it wouldn’t matter. It’s simply a family affair, if he’s really Franky’s cousin. So, say yes." "Very well, if he’ll come!" *CHAPTER XLIX* *THE WAR CLOUD BREAKS* Patrine kissed her friend again, and went, leaving Kittums in a whirl of astonishment. To Franky, presently returning from the conjectural region known as Headquarters she announced: "Here’s something like news! Pat Saxham—the girl with the Nile sunrise hair that you don’t like!—is going to marry a Flying Man. And his name is—the same as yours!" "By the Great Snipe! you don’t say so!" Franky, slim and dapper in the scarlet Guards’ tunic and crimson sash, divested himself of his sword, dropped his immaculate buckskin gloves into his forage-cap, and sighed with undisguised relief as the attentive Jobling, who had been hovering in the background, disappeared with these articles. Then he proceeded carefully to choose a cigarette from the silver box of Sobranies, lighted it up, bundled Fits out of her master’s corner of the sofa, and dropped into it with a sigh of relief.