Ernie was on the lift that evening. He stood in the corridor, listening to the hubbub in the hall, and waiting for the first rush of visitors who had arranged themselves and appropriated keys, when he saw a man emerge from Madame's private sitting-room at the end of the passage.
Then he came marching resolutely down the corridor, absorbed, swift, direct, with eyes neither to right nor left, wearing a Burberry, and the short tooth-brush moustache that was still the rage in the British Army; a young man of a type so familiar to Ernie that he smiled on recognizing it.
The traveller entered the passenger-lift with a curt,
"Third Floor!"
It was Captain Royal.
Ernie had just been long enough away from the Regiment to see everything connected with it through the roseate mists of sentimentality.
He pulled the cord and the lift ascended.
"Beg pardon, sir," he said shyly. "Might you remember me?"
Royal turned his slate-blue eyes on the other, and extended a sudden hand.
"What! Caspar, the cricketer!" he cried with the gay nonchalance peculiar to him. "Rather!—that stand against the Rifle Brigade at Pindi? Yes. What! Got a job you like? What!"