Pamela rose. "It's nearly lunch time," she said. "Thank you very much for helping me. I must think what to do."
[CHAPTER XX]
A QUESTION OF FINANCE
"I wanted to ask your advice."
Colonel Eldridge stood in front of the empty fireplace, filling his pipe; Fred was in one of the shabby leather easy chairs, smoking a cigarette. The room was very quiet and retired, looking on to a corner of lawn surrounded by banked rhododendrons, under the shade of a great hornbeam.
Colonel Eldridge seemed to have some difficulty in coming to the point. He put the lid carefully on his old lead tobacco box, and lit his pipe from a box of matches on the mantelpiece before he spoke again.
"You and Hugo were friends together as boys," he said.
"Oh, yes. And we wrote to one another once or twice after I went abroad. I only just missed him once when we were on the Somme. I wish I'd seen him before he was killed."