“My battalion did splendidly and our debt to old Oakley is great.  There is only a handful of us left and we are withdrawn, of course, from the lines.  By some miracle I escaped without a hurt.  Everybody has been very generous, making it up to us for our bad times.  The Corps Commander came and threw bouquets in person, and we hear that D.H. himself is going out of his way to come and inspect us.  I go home on leave in a fortnight and hope to come back in command of the battalion.  Perhaps we may meet in London.  Let me hear if that is possible.”

The second letter had been sent from Rackham Park, and in it Millie Splay wrote: 

“We have not heard from you for years.  Will you be in England this August?  We are trying to gather again our old Goodwood party.  Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp will be home on leave.  There will be no Goodwood of course, but there is a meeting at Gatwick which is easily reached from here.  Do come if you can and bring your friend with you, if he is in London and has nothing better to do.  We have all been reading about him in the papers, and Chichester is very proud of belonging to the same mess, and says what a wonderful thing it must be to be able to get into the papers like that, without trying to.”

Hillyard could see the smile upon Lady Splay’s face as she wrote that sentence.  Hillyard laughed as he read it but it was less in amusement as from pleasure at the particular information which this sentence contained.  Harry Luttrell had clearly won a special distinction in the hard fighting at Thiepval.  There was not a word in Harry’s letter to suggest it.  There would not be.  All his pride and joy would be engrossed by the great fact that his battalion had increased its good name.

There was a closing sentence in Millie Splay’s letter which brought another smile to his lips.

“Linda Spavinsky is, alas, going as strong as ever.  She was married last meek, in violet, as you will remember, to the Funeral March of a Marionette and already she is in the throes of domestic unhappiness.  Her husband, fleshy, of course, red in the face, and accustomed to sleep after dinner, simply WON’T understand her.”

Here again Hillyard was able to see the smile on Millicent Splay’s face, but it was a smile rather rueful and it ended, no doubt, in a sigh of annoyance.  Hillyard himself was caught away to quite another scene.  He was once more in the small motor-car on the top of Duncton Hill, and looked out over the Weald of Sussex to the Blackdown and Hindhead, and the slopes of Leith Hill, imagined rather than seen, in the summer haze.  He saw Joan Whitworth’s rapt face, and heard her eager cry.

“Look out over the Weald of Sussex, so that you can carry it away with you in your breast.  Isn’t it worth everything—­banishment, suffering—­everything?  Not the people so much, but the earth itself and the jolly homes upon it!”