He lay on his elbows looking up at her.  Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled a little.  She realized that an able man was experimenting on her, putting her through her paces.  She asked what he meant by ’the old Oxford,’ and an amusing dialogue sprang up between them as to their respective recollections of the great University—­the dons, the lectures, the games, the Eights, ‘Commem.’ and the like.  The Captain presently declared that Elizabeth had had a much nicer Oxford than he, and he wished he had been a female student.

‘Didn’t you—­didn’t you,’ he said, his keen eyes observing her, ’get a prize once that somebody had given to the Women’s Colleges for some Greek iambics?’

‘Oh,’ cried Elizabeth, ‘how did you hear of that?’

‘I was rather a dab at them myself,’ he said lazily, drawing his hat over his eyes as he lay in the sun, ’and I perfectly remember hearing of a young lady—­yes, I believe it was you!—­whose translation of Browning’s “Lost Leader” into Greek iambics was better than mine.  They set it in the Ireland.  You admit it?  Capital!  As to the superiority of yours, I was, of course, entirely sceptical, though polite.  Remind me, how did you translate “Just for a ribbon to put on his coat"?’

With a laughing mouth, Elizabeth at once quoted the Greek.

The Captain made a wry face.

‘It sounds plausible, I agree,’ he said slowly, ’but I don’t believe a Greek would have understood a word of it.  You remember that in the dim Victorian ages, when one great Latin scholar gave, as he thought, the neatest possible translation of “The path of glory leads but to the grave,” another great Latin scholar declared that all a Roman could have understood by it would have been “The path of a public office leads to the jaws of the hillock"?’

The old Oxford joke was new in the ears of this Georgian generation, and when the laugh subsided, Elizabeth said mildly: 

‘Now, please, may I have yours?’

‘What—­my translation?  Oh—­horribly unfair!’ said the Captain, chewing a piece of grass.  ‘However, here it is!’

He gave it out—­with unction.

Elizabeth fell upon it in a flash, dissected and quarrelled with every word of it, turned it inside out in fact, while the Captain, still chewing, followed her with eyes of growing enjoyment.

‘Well, I’ll take a vote when I get back to the front,’ he said, when she came to an end.  ’Several firsts in Mods on our staff.  I’ll send you the result.’

The talk dropped.  The mention of the front reminded every one of the war, and its bearing on their own personal lot.  Desmond was going into camp that evening.  In a few months he would be a full-blown gunner at the front.  Beryl, watching Aubrey’s thin face and nervous frown, proved inwardly that the Aldershot appointment might go on.  And Elizabeth’s thoughts had flown to her brother in Mesopotamia.