With vexation she felt the colour rush to her cheeks.

‘I shan’t have much to say about them,’ she said stiffly.

’I’m sure you will!  You’ll get keen!  But write about anything.  It’s awfully jolly to get letters at the front!’

His friendly, interrogating eyes were on her, as though she puzzled him in this new phase, and he wanted to understand her.  She said hurriedly, ‘If you like,’ hating herself for the coolness in her voice, and shook hands, only to hear him say, as he turned finally to Elizabeth, ’Mind, you have promised me “The Battle of the Plough”!  I’m afraid you’ll hardly have time to put it into iambics!’

So he had asked Miss Bremerton to write to him too!  Pamela vowed inwardly that in that case she would not write him a line.  And it seemed to her unseemly that her father’s secretary should be making mock of her father’s proceedings with a man who was a complete stranger to her.  She walked impetuously ahead of Aubrey and Elizabeth.  Towards the west the beautiful day was dying, and the light streamed on the girl’s lithe young figure and caught her golden-brown hair.  Clouds of gnats rose in the mild air; and a light seemed to come back from the bronzed and purple hedgerows, making a gorgeous atmosphere, in which the quiet hill-top and the thinning trees swam transfigured.  A green woodpecker was pecking industriously among some hedgerow oaks, and Pamela, who loved birds and watched them, caught every now and then the glitter of his flight.  The world was dropping towards sleep.  But she was burningly awake and alive.  Had she ever been really alive before?

Then—­suddenly she remembered Desmond.  He was to be home from some farewell visits between five and six.  She would be late; he might want her for a hundred things.  His last evening!  Her heart smote her.  They had reached the park gates.  Waving her hand to the two behind, with the one word ‘Desmond!’ she began to run, and was soon out of their sight.

* * * * *

Elizabeth and Aubrey were not long behind her.  They found the house indeed pervaded with Desmond, and Desmond’s going.  Aubrey also was going up to town, but of him nobody took any notice.  Pamela and Forest were in attendance on the young warrior, who was himself in the wildest spirits, shouting and whistling up and downstairs, singing the newest and most shocking of camp songs, chaffing Forest, and looking with mischievous eyes at the various knitted ‘comforts’ to which his married sisters were hastily putting the last stitches.

‘I say, Pam—­do you see me in mittens?’ he said to her in the hall, thrusting out his two splendid hands with a grin.  ’And as for that jersey of Alice’s—­why, I should stew to death in it.  Oh, I know—­I can give it to my batman.  The fellows tell me you can always get rid of things to your batman.  It’s like sending your wedding-presents to the pawn-shop.  But where is father?’ The boy looked discontentedly at his watch.  ’He vowed he’d be here by five.  I must be off by a few minutes after eight.’