“Gwinnie—­you know why McClane won’t have John?”

“I suppose because Mrs. Rankin’s keen on him.”

“McClane isn’t keen on Mrs. Rankin....  Can’t you see he’s trying to hoof John out of Belgium, because he wants all the glory to himself?  We wouldn’t do that to one of them, even if we were mean enough not to want them in it.”

“He wanted Sutton.”

“Oh, Sutton—­He wasn’t afraid of him....  When you think of the war—­and think of people being like that.  Jealous.  Hating each other—­”

* * * * *

You mightn’t like Mrs. Rankin, Mrs. Rankin and McClane; but you couldn’t say they weren’t splendid.

Five days had passed.  On the third day the McClane Corps had been sent out. (Mrs. Rankin had not dined with the Colonel for nothing.)

It went again and again.  By the fifth day they knew that it had distinguished itself at Alost and Termonde and Quatrecht.  The names sounded in their brains like a song with an exciting, maddening refrain.  October stretched before them, golden and blank, a volume of tense, vibrating time.

Nothing for it but to wait and wait.  The summons might come any minute.  Charlotte and Gwinnie had begun by sitting on their drivers’ seats in the ambulances standing in the yard, ready to start the very instant it came.  Their orders were to hold themselves in readiness.  They held themselves in readiness and saw McClane’s cars swing out from the rubbered sweep in front of the Hospital three and four times a day.  They stood on their balcony and watched them rush along the road that led to the battlefields southeast of the city.  The sight of the flat Flemish land and the sadness of lovely days oppressed them.  She felt that it must be partly that.  The incredible loveliness of the days.  They sat brooding over the map of Belgium, marking down the names of the places, Alost, Termonde and Quatrecht, that McClane had gone to, that he would talk about on his return, when an awful interest would impel them to listen.  He and Mrs. Rankin would come in about tea-time, swaggering and excited, telling everybody that they had been in the line of fire; and Alice Bartrum would move about the room, quiet and sweet, cutting bread and butter and pretending to be unconcerned in the narration.  And in the evening, after dinner, the discussion went on and on in John’s bedroom.  He raged against his infernal luck.  If they thought he was going to take it lying down—­

“McClane can keep me out of my messroom, but he can’t keep me out of my job.  There’s room in ‘the line of fire’ for both of us.”

“How are you going to get into it?” said Sutton.

“Same way as McClane.  If he can go to Head Quarters, so can I.”

“I wouldn’t,” Sutton said.  “It might give a bad impression.  Our turn’ll come before long.”

Gwinnie laughed.  “It won’t—­unless Charlotte dines with the Colonel.”