"What about the Army?" he asked.
"Oh, she—it's back there too. Miss Mayne's the Army. She's our governess, and her brother was killed in the retreat from Mons, so we always let her be the Army. He was in the Guards, and she only cried once; she'd be here now only Georgie—Georgina, you know, my sister—made her stop and pick blackberries. Georgina swanks rather nowadays when we have games—she usen't to, but she's getting old. Jane doesn't swank, only she got foul of some brambles, and she's coming on in her knickerbockers when she's got her skirt off."
The dilatory advance of the remainder of the British Expeditionary Force having been satisfactorily explained, Cornelius James sat down and clasped his hands about his small scarred knees. His eyes were drawn and held by the magnetism of the lethal weapon which lay idly upon the man's knees.
"Is that loaded?" he queried.
"Yep."
"What do you shoot with it—mostly—hereabouts?"
From his tone the conversation might have been conducted in a country where tiger predominated among the fauna.
"Rabbits," replied the other, adding after a pause: "sitting." He jerked open the breech of the miniature rifle, picked up the tiny shell that flicked out on to the turf and handed it gravely to his interrogator.
Cornelius James accepted it with equal gravity.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "What's up with your hand? Why is it all bandaged? Have you been wounded in the war?"