Still the Reveille Company, after sustaining the shock, had somehow continued to do a pretty good business.  It had patriotically offered its plant and services to the War Office, and had been repulsed with contumely and ignominy.  The War Office had most caustically intimated to the Reveille Company that it had no use and never under any conceivable circumstances could have any use whatever for the Reveille Company, and that the Reveille Company was a forward and tedious jackanapes, unworthy even of an articulate rebuff.  Now the autograph letter with the Reveille note-heading was written by the managing director (who represented G.J.’s interests on the Board), and it stated that the War Office had been to the Reveille Company, and implored it to enlarge itself, and given it vast orders at grand prices for all sorts of things that it had never made before.  The profits of 1915 would be doubled, if not trebled—­perhaps quadrupled.  G.J. was relieved, uplifted; and he sniggered at his terrible forebodings of August and September.  Ruin?  He was actually going to make money out of the greatest war that the world, etc. etc.  And why not?  Somebody had to make money, and somebody had to pay for the war in income tax.  For the first time the incubus of the war seemed lighter upon G.J.  And also he need feel no slightest concern about the financial aspect of any possible developments of the Christine adventure.  He had a very clear and undeniable sensation of positive happiness.

Chapter 7

FOR THE EMPIRE

Mrs. Braiding came into the drawing-room, and he wondered, paternally, why she was so fidgety and why her tranquillising mate had not appeared.  To the careless observer she was a cheerful woman, but the temple of her brightness was reared over a dark and frightful crypt in which the demons of doubt, anxiety, and despair year after year dragged at their chains, intimidating hope.  Slender, small, and neat, she passed her life in bravely fronting the shapes of disaster with an earnest, vivacious, upturned face.  She was thirty-five, and her aspect recalled the pretty, respected lady’s-maid which she had been before Braiding got her and knocked some nonsense out of her and turned her into a wife.

G.J., still paternally, but firmly, took her up at once.

“I say, Mrs. Braiding, what about this dish-cover?”

He lifted the article, of which the copper was beginning to show through the Sheffield plating.

“Yes sir.  It does look rather impoverished, doesn’t it?”

“But I told Braiding to use the new toast-dish I bought last week but one.”

“Did you, sir?  I was very happy about the new one as soon as I saw it, but Braiding never gave me your instructions in regard to it.”  She glanced at the cabinet in which the new toast-dish reposed with other antique metal-work.  “Braiding’s been rather upset this last few days, sir.”