"Dearest girl, listen to me!" Lesbia exclaimed, raising her voice more than ever above the increasing din and clatter all round them. "I've been talking the whole thing over with your mother, and she's more than willing that I should have you. You needn't trouble about that for a _moment_. Poor dear Joanna was simply too sweet about it for words. 'I know you'll be a mother to my girl for me,' she said." Lesbia gazed at Char with the air of one who believes absolutely in the pathos she exploits, and Char was forced to the conclusion that she actually imagined herself to be quoting correctly. For her own part, she attached not the slightest value to Mrs. Willoughby's flights of fancy. Nevertheless, she was vexed and uneasy. Why could not people leave her alone? It was all very well for Miss Bruce to appreciate the stress of circumstances under which Char pursued her work, but the voluble importunity of Mrs. Willoughby was as unwelcome as it was unescapable. Char looked round her, in search of a possible channel into which to direct Lesbia's attention. "Isn't that your Lance-Corporal?" she rather basely inquired. "Where?" shrieked Lesbia. "You know, I'm quite, quite blind!" This was a fiction frequently indulged in by Mrs. Willoughby, whose eye could safely be trusted to pierce the densest crowd when convenient to herself. "_I_ see him, just come in. Now, I suppose he'll make a bee-line straight for my little corner. Dear thing, he always does! It's too wonderful to hear him describe all that goes on _out there_, you know. He was out right at the very beginning, all through Mons and the Marne and Ypres and everything. They say the men don't like talking about it; but I've had, I suppose, more experience than any woman in London, what with one thing and another, and they always talk to me. The dear fellows in the hospital I visit simply yarn by the hour--they _love_ it--and it's too enthralling for words. They're so sweetly quaint. One dear fellow always talked about a place he called _Wipers_, and it was simply ages before I realized that he meant _Ypres_! Wasn't that too priceless?" On this highly original anecdote Mrs. Willoughby hurried away, struggling into her blue-and-white overall as she went. Char saw her reach the side of the Lance-Corporal and break into voluble greetings, punctuated by hysterical protests from the Pekinese, wedged firmly under her arm. "Well?" said Trevellyan's voice behind her. "Well! Nothing will induce me to go and stay there, with that wretched little beast making its hideous noise all day and all night." They both laughed. "Seriously, Johnnie, I wish you'd tell Brucey that she really has exceeded her privileges. I can't have plans of that sort made over my head, as she should have known. What on earth possessed her?" "Your letter worried her. She thought that the Hostel sounded so uncomfortable."