Randy made his little gesture of salute.  “They were that.  I don’t wonder you are proud of them.”

“It was worth all the rest,” the Major said, “to have known my men.”

He looked out of the window at the drizzle of rain.  “How quiet the world seems after it all——­”

Then like the snap of bullets came the staccato voice through the open door of the compartment.

“Find out why we are stopping in this beastly hole, Kemp, and get me something cold to drink.”

Kemp, sailing down the aisle, like a Lilliputian drum major, tripped over Randy’s foot.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, and sailed on.

Randy looked after him. “‘His Master’s voice——­’”

“And to think,” Prime remarked, “that the coldest thing he can get on this train is ginger ale.”

Kemp, coming back with a golden bottle, with cracked ice in a tall glass, with a crisp curl of lemon peel, ready for an innocuous libation, brought his nose down from the heights to look for the foot, found that it no longer barred the way, and marched on to hidden music.

“Leave the door open, leave it open,” snapped the voice, “isn’t there an electric fan?  Well, put it on, put it on——­”

“He drinks nectar and complains to the gods,” said the Major softly, “why can’t we, too, drink?”

They had theirs on a table which the porter set between them.  The train moved on before they had finished.  “We’ll be in Charlottesville in less than an hour,” the conductor announced.

“Is that where we get off, Paine?”

“One mile beyond.  Are they going to meet you?”

“I’ll get a station wagon.”

Young Paine grinned.  “There aren’t any.  But if Mother knows you’re coming she’ll send down.  And anyhow she expects me.”

“After a year in France—­it will be a warm welcome——­”

“A wet one, but I love the rain, and the red mud, every blooming inch of it.”

“Of course you do.  Just as I love the dust of the desert.”

They spoke, each of them, with a sort of tense calmness.  One doesn’t confess to a lump in one’s throat.

The little man, Kemp, was brushing things in the aisle.  He was hot but unconquered.  Having laid out the belongings of the man he served, he took a sudden recess, and came back with a fresh collar, a wet but faultless pompadour, and a suspicion of powder on his small nose.

“All right, sir, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes, sir,” they heard him say, as he was swallowed up by the yawning door.

II

Fifteen minutes later when the train slowed up, there emerged from the drawing-room a man some years older than Randolph Paine, and many years younger than Major Prime.  He was good-looking, well-dressed, but apparently in a very bad temper.  Kemp, in an excited, Skye-terrier manner, had gotten the bags together, had a raincoat over his arm, had an umbrella handy, had apparently foreseen every contingency but one.