"An English lady, elderly, with--her daughter----" at which moment precisely the girl came in alone. Lunch was over, the room empty. There was a second's difficult pause. It seemed ridiculous not to speak. Their eyes met. The girl blushed furiously. He was very quick for an Englishman. "I was allowing myself to ask after your mother," he began. "I was afraid"--he glanced at the table laid for one--"she was not well, perhaps?" "Oh, but that's very kind of you, I'm sure." She smiled. He saw the small white even teeth.... And before three days had passed, he was so deeply in love that he simply couldn't help himself. "I believe," he said lamely, "this is yours. You dropped it, you know. Er--may I keep it? It's only an olive." They were, of course, in an olive grove when he asked it, and the sun was setting. She looked at him, looked him up and down, looked at his ears, his eyes. He felt that in another second her little fingers would slip up and tweak the first, or close the second with a soft pressure---- "Tell me," he begged: "did you dream anything--that first night I saw you?" She took a quick step backwards. "No," she said, as he followed her more quickly still, "I don't think I did. But," she went on breathlessly as he caught her up, "I knew--from the way you picked it up----" "Knew what?" he demanded, holding her tightly so that she could not get away again. "That you were already half and half, but would soon be altogether." And, as he kissed her, he felt her soft little fingers tweak his ears. ONCE A HERO By HAROLD BRIGHOUSE (From _Pan_) 1922 Standing in a sheltered doorway a tramp, with a slouch hat crammed low over a notably unwashed face, watched the outside of the new works canteen of the Sir William Rumbold Ltd., Engineering Company. Perhaps because they were workers while he was a tramp, he had an air of compassionate cynicism as the audience assembled and thronged into the building, which, as prodigally advertised throughout Calderside, was to be opened that night by Sir William in person. There being no one to observe him, the tramp could be frank with his cynicism; but inside the building, in the platform ante-room, Mr. Edward Fosdike, who was Sir William's locally resident secretary, had to discipline his private feelings to a suave concurrence in his employer's florid enthusiasm. Fosdike served Sir William well, but no man is a hero to his (male) secretary. "I hope you will find the arrangements satisfactory," Fosdike was saying, tugging nervously at his maltreated moustache. "You speak at seven and declare the canteen open. Then there's a meal." He hesitated. "Perhaps I should have warned you to dine before you came." Sir William was aware of being a very gallant gentleman. "Not at all," he said heroically, "not at all. I have not spared my purse over this War Memorial. Why should I spare my feelings? Well, now, you've seen about the Press?"