"You men are all jealous. We're coming out to France as V.A.D.'s soon."
"Good Lord, Derek—you ought to have seen their first drill. In one corner of the lawn that poor devil of a sergeant with his face a shiny purple alternately sobbed and bellowed like a bull—while twenty-seven W.W.W.'s tied themselves into a knot like a Rugby football scrum, and told one another how they'd done it. It was the most heart-rending sight I've ever seen."
"Dear old Dad!" The girl blew a cloud of smoke. "You told it better last time."
"Don't interrupt, Monica. The final tableau——"
"Which one are you going to tell him, dear? The one where James Henry bit the Vicar's wife in the leg, or the one where the sergeant with a choking cry of 'Double, damn you!' fell fainting into the rhododendron bush?"
"I think the second is the better," remarked the soldier pensively. "Dogs always bite the Vicar's wife's leg. Not a hobby I should personally take up, but——"
They all laughed. "Now run indoors, old 'un, and tell John to get you a mixed Vermouth—I want to talk to Derek." The girl gently pushed her father towards the open window.
It was at that particular moment in James Henry's career that, having snapped at a wasp and partially killed it, he inadvertently sat on the carcase by mistake. As he explained to Harriet Emily afterwards, it wasn't so much the discomfort of the proceeding which annoyed him, as the unfeeling laughter of the spectators. And it was only when she'd bitten him in the other ear that he remembered he had disowned her that very afternoon.