Then one day, when I was writing letters in the Mess, he strolled in.  “Hullo!” he said, “where’s the C.O.?  What?...  Oh, thanks awfully, and ...  Oh, I say, good Lord!  I owe you three quid, don’t I?” and he drifted out abstractedly.

“Three!” I echoed dizzily, as the door banged.  I staggered home for the week-end.

I found Adela having an excited conversation with the telephone in the hall.

“Ooo!” she said, hanging up the receiver, “Herbert’s a hero.  He’s just been telling me.  And he’s coming to dinner to-night.”

“I also,” I responded with emotion, “have a tale to unfold,” and I unfolded it.

When at last Herbert, moving modestly under the burden of a newly acquired D.S.O., arrived at the flat, hospitality and an unaccustomed awe withheld me from referring to so sordid a matter as the inconsiderable decrease in my lately-invested capital.  Herbert, however, deprecated heroics, and, as he was saying good-night, came of his own accord to the subject of debts.  He was always a conscientious fellow.

“You know, old chap,” he said with charming candour, as I saw him off from the doorstep, “you must remind me to pay up that two quid some time.  I keep forgetting, and when I do remember, like now, I haven’t any money to do it with.  Cheero!” The door clicked and I swooned.

It was very difficult; I could not even make up my mind whether my best policy was to stalk Herbert with vigilance or to avoid him as persistently as discipline allowed.  On the one hand he wasn’t the cheque-book kind of man and he wouldn’t pay me unless he saw me.  Contrariwise, he wouldn’t even if he did, and whenever he saw me my original loan of ten gold sovereigns might continue its rapid decline.  Finally I decided to abstain from his society.

Shortly after this momentous decision the War Office sent him off to some remote part of the country, and for many months our financial relations remained unaltered—­at any rate in my own estimation.  He was still far away when Adela II arrived, so we did our best to hush her up; we thought that if we could smuggle her to, say, the age of ten and send her to school Herbert couldn’t possibly come and congratulate us about her.  That only shows how much we didn’t know; for Herbert procured some leave three weeks later and was excitedly mounting our stairs within a few hours.

“P’r’aps,” whispered Adela bravely as he was being announced, “he’ll forget about money—­p’r’aps he’ll even put it up a bit.”

I smiled cynically, and was justified ten minutes later, when Herbert’s conscience, troubled and apologetic, reminded him about that guinea he owed me.

At the christening it fell to half-a-quid, and, according to Herbert’s latest allegation, it is only his rotten memory for postal-orders that prevents him from sending me that dollar at once.