soldier only for fun.  The major talked too much, and to the wrong people.  He became lyric concerning the talents of Braiding to a dandiacal Divisional General at Colchester, and soon, by the actuating of mysterious forces and the filling up of many Army forms, Braiding was removed to Colchester, and had to save the Empire by valeting the Divisonal General.  Foiled in one direction, Braiding advanced in another.  By tradition, when a valet marries a lady’s maid, the effect on the birth-rate is naught.  And it is certain that but for the war Braiding would not have permitted himself to act as he did.  The Empire, however, needed citizens.  The first rumour that Braiding had done what in him lay to meet the need spread through the kitchens of the Albany like a new gospel, incredible and stupefying—­but which imposed itself.  The Albany was never the same again.

All the kitchens were agreed that Mr. Hoape would soon be stranded.  The spectacle of Mrs. Braiding as she slipped out of a morning past the porter’s lodge mesmerised beholders.  At last, when things had reached the limit, Mrs. Braiding slipped out and did not come back.  Meanwhile a much younger sister of hers had been introduced into the flat.  But when Mrs. Braiding went the virgin went also.  The flat was more or less closed, and Mr. Hoape had slept at his club for weeks.  At length the flat was reopened, but whereas three had left it, four returned.

That a bachelor of Mr. Hoape’s fastidiousness should tolerate in his home a woman with a tiny baby was remarkable; it was as astounding perhaps as any phenomenon of the war, and a sublime proof that Mr. Hoape realised that the Empire was fighting for its life.  It arose from the fact that both G.J. and Braiding were men of considerable sagacity.  Braiding had issued an order, after seeing G.J., that his wife should not leave G.J.’s service.  And Mrs. Braiding, too, had her sense of duty.  She was very proud of G.J.’s war-work, and would have thought it disloyal to leave him in the lurch, and so possibly prejudice the war-work—­especially as she was convinced that he would never get anybody else comparable to herself.

At first she had been a little apologetic and diffident about her offspring.  But soon the man-child had established an important position in the flat, and though he was generally invisible, his individuality pervaded the whole place.  G.J. had easily got accustomed to the new inhabitant.  He tolerated and then liked the babe.  He had never nursed it—­for such an act would have been excessive—­but he had once stuck his finger in its mouth, and he had given it a perambulator that folded up.  He did venture secretly to hope that Braiding would not imagine it to be his duty to provide further for the needs of the Empire.

That Mrs. Braiding had grown rather shameless in motherhood was shown by her quite casual demeanour as she now came into the drawing-room with the baby, for this was the first time she had ever come into the drawing-room with the baby, knowing her august master to be there.