"'Sir,' says MacBethmann, trembling in every limb and even in his neck, 'ye'd be wise no' to go out the day.'
"But the prood 'Sausage-Killer' rises himself to his full length.
"'Unhand ma pants, Angus,' says he, 'ma duty calls,' and away goes the puir wee feller to meet his doom at the hands of the Terror of the Skies."
"That's you," said the girl.
"Ye're a good guesser," said Tam, pouring out the tea the waiter had brought. "Do ye take sugar or are ye a victim of the cocktail habit?"
"Did you kill him?" asked the girl.
"Poleetically and in a military sense the 'Sausage-Killer' is dead," said Tam; "as a human being he is still alive, being detained during his Majesty's displeasure."
"You will tell me the rest, won't you?" she pleaded. With her, Tam invariably ended his romances at the point where they could only be continued by the relation of his own prowess, "and I'm glad you brought him down—it makes me shudder to see the balloons burning. Oh, and do you know they bombed Number One-Three-One last night?"
"Ye don't say!"
There was amazement in his look, but there was pain, too. The traditions of the air service had become his traditions. A breach of the unwritten code by the enemy was almost as painful a matter to him as though it was committed by one of his own comrades. For his spiritual growth had dated from the hour of his enlistment, and that period of life wherein youth absorbs its most vivid and most eradicable impressions, had coincided with the two years he had spent in his new environment.