“It was disappointing,” he admitted.

There was a brief pause, during which Sarah finished her sandwiches and lit a cigarette.

“Wilshaw seems to be having a little trouble with the outside porter,” her host remarked presently.

“It must cost him at least half a sovereign every time I leave the cab,” Sarah sighed.

“How much do you make a week out of your driving, if it isn’t too personal a question?” he enquired.

“It depends upon how much Jimmy’s got.”

“Is he your only client, then?”

“He very seldom gives me a chance of another.  Once or twice I’ve refused to be engaged by the day, but he sends his man around to the garage and I find him sitting in the cab when I arrive.”

Wingate laughed softly.  She looked up at him with twinkling eyes.

“I believe you’re making fun of my profession,” she complained.

“Not at all, but I was wondering whether it wouldn’t be cheaper for you to marry Jimmy, as you call him.”

“We have spoken about it once or twice,” she admitted.  “The worst of it is, I don’t think the cab would support two.”

“Is Wilshaw so badly off?”

“His money is tied up until he is twenty-eight,” Sarah explained.  “I think that his father must have known how he was going to turn out.  Jimmy promised that he would never anticipate it, and the dear old thing keeps his word.  We shall be married on his twenty-eighth birthday, all right, unless his mother does the decent thing before.”

“Has she money?” Wingate asked.

“Plenty—­but she hasn’t much confidence in Jimmy.  I think she shows signs of wavering lately, though.  Perhaps his latest idea—­he’s going into the City to-morrow, you know—­may bring her around.—­Mr. Wingate!”

“Well?”

“You’re rather a dear old thing, you know,” she said, “although you’re so serious.”

“And you’re quite nice,” he admitted, “although you’re such an incorrigible little flirt.”

“How do you know?” she laughed.  “You never give me a chance of showing what I can do in that direction.”

“Too old, my dear young lady,” her host lamented, as he mixed himself a whisky and soda.

“Rubbish!” she scoffed.  “Too much in love with some one else, I believe.”

“These are too strenuous days for that sort of thing,” he rejoined, “except for children like you and Mr. Wilshaw.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” she objected.  “The world has never gone so queerly that people haven’t remembered to go on loving and be made love to.  Look at the war marriages.”

“Yes—­and the war divorces,” he reminded her.

“Brute!” she exclaimed, with a little grimace.

“Why ’brute’?” he protested.  “You can’t deny them.  Some of these marriages were genuine enough, of course.  Others were simply the result of a sort of amorous hysteria.  Affected every one in those days just like a germ.”