They lunched frugally at an A.B.C. shop, and having boarded a Number Nine bus sped westward along Piccadilly. A communicative man with a broken nose, wearing the silver badge of a discharged soldier, leaned over their shoulders from the seat behind them. "Sir Dougliss ’as done it again, ladies!" he announced importantly, thrusting an evening paper before them. "Look! _Fifteen-mile front—twelve villages—five thousand prisoners_! That’s the stuff to give ’em!" The girls read the report eagerly. It described the opening British attack of the Third Battle of Ypres. (In the first two, the attack had come from the other side.) Woods and villages, long familiar in daily bulletins as German strongholds, were at last in British hands—Hollebeke, Sanctuary Wood, Saint Julien, Hooge—and the advance was still continuing. Marjorie’s heart quickened—then faltered. Great victories mean big casualties—and she did not even know where Roy was. When last heard of she had gathered that he was in a rest-area somewhere behind Amiens. But that had been five weeks ago. "Do you know that district?" Liss was asking. "Know it? I should think I did, miss—like the back of me ’and! I copped a sweet one there in ’fifteen—near Cambray." "But Cambrai is not in the Salient," observed Marjorie. The communicative man conceded the point immediately. "Neither it is, miss—not in that _Salient_. My error! They rushed us up and down that Western Front so fast, no wonder a feller gets mixed! I was hit in both places, though. Well, ’ere we are in good old ’Ammersmiff. This is where I ’ops off. Good-day, ladies! Keep the paper, and welcome." "It’s big news, isn’t it?" said Liss, continuing to skim through the heavily leaded paragraph. "I wonder why that man thought Cambrai was in the Salient," remarked Marjorie. "Swank, I expect," said Liss. "Probably he hasn’t been out at all—_or_ wounded!" "But he was wearing a silver badge," objected Marjorie, to whom all military geese were swans. "Perhaps he pinched it," suggested Miss Lyle, who harboured few illusions concerning the male sex. Her theory received entire corroboration a moment later. On folding up the newspaper before descending they discovered that Marjorie’s vanity-bag, which was lying on the seat between them, had been neatly slit open and its entire contents extracted. The pair turned and regarded one another silently. Liss was the first to speak. "That brings us down to one and sevenpence," she remarked. "No wonder he didn’t know where Cambrai was!" *IV* "Luncheon is served," announced Liss. "What is there?" asked Marjorie. "The same as breakfast, with Willie and John thrown in. Also the rest of the day before yesterday’s loaf. Pull up your chair, dear." As breakfast had consisted of nothing at all, the prodigality of this menu can be readily gauged. Willie and John, by the way, were the last two sardines in the tin.