He had his code.
"I guess no girl friend of mine would ask me for a job where I work, twice," he'd told Olwen when they had first met in London at her Uncle's hotel. The Professor's niece, greatly daring, had retorted, "Do you mean she'd get it the first time of asking?"
"She'd get 'it,' sure thing. In the neck," the young Staff-officer had explained grimly. "She'd know better than to ask the second time."
So, exactly as he was not taking her out to lunch, Captain Ross had not secured for her this post on The Honeycomb. He had told Jack Awdas to get it for her, through his friend Major Leefe. A very different thing.
Olwen had "given up" the subtle reasonings of the sex.
Today he was obviously in a bad temper. Why? After he had ordered his own lunch, he turned to her with an edgy politeness.
"I hope you enjoyed the show last night, Miss Howel-Jones."
"Show——?" said Olwen, forgetting for a second that she had been taken to the theatre by Mr. Ellerton, the young R.N.A.S. officer.
"Yes; you were too occupied to notice who else was in the house, I guess. I was in the dress-sairrcle. I looked right down upon you in the stalls."
Now, Olwen was losing her habit of the vivid blush that used to scorch her. She merely coloured up slightly but prettily as she returned, "Oh, were you?" and proceeded to eat her fish and to discuss the play—which had been Romance. She had thought it lovely.