“Six thirty, ack emma, sir. Time to get up, sir.”
James Garton, sometime driver in the Royal Field Artillery, now convalescing from wounds, on the Tebbits-Jameson farm, tapped his sleeping master on the left shoulder. Peter, waking with a start, looked round his comfortable dressing-room, at the mauve eiderdown on his bed, the bow-fronted wardrobe, the hunting prints on the walls.
“Lord, Garton! What on earth are you playing at? We aren’t on active service now.”
“No, sir.” The Yorkshireman grinned. “I don’t think there’ll be much active service after today, sir. Not if the Huns sign this armistice”—he pronounced the word armistïce—“the newspapers are talking about.”
“Thought I’d like to wake you for the last morning of the war, sir,” Garton went on, producing a cup of tea and some biscuits. “Should I put out your riding-kit, sir?”
“No, Garton, you should not”—laughed Peter, falling in with the spirit of the game—“you should put out the blue suit of mufti you’ll find in that wardrobe. Also, you should prepare my bath.”
Said the Yorkshireman, hanging serge slacks carefully over the back of a chair, “Mister Harry says that you and Mrs. Jameson are sure to get taken up for joy-riding, sir.”
“That be damned for a tale.” Peter, tea finished, tumbled out of bed; stuck his feet into a pair of red morocco slippers; drew silk dressing-gown over pyjamas.
They had been speaking very quietly for fear of waking the pair in the next room: but now a voice, Patricia’s voice, called through the doorway:—
“Time to get up, Peter. Are you awake, Peter?”