To his intense annoyance Vane found himself colouring slightly, and at the same moment he became acutely aware that a pair of grey eyes were fixed on him from the other side of the table.
"She is nursing at Etaples, I believe," he answered casually, but a soft gurgle of laughter told him it was useless.
"Captain Vane, Dad, is the soul of discretion," mocked Joan. "I shouldn't be surprised if he wasn't nursed by her. . . ."
"Devilish nice girl to be nursed by, too, my dear," chuckled her father, "from what I remember of her. What do you think, Vane?" He was mercifully spared the necessity of answering by the intervention of Aunt Jane, who had pursued her own train of thought, blissfully unconscious of any change of conversation.
"How many of the brutes did you say you'd killed, young man?" she boomed at him, at the same time putting her ear-trumpet at the "ready."
"Two for certain," howled Vane; "perhaps three."
She resumed her lunch, and Sir James laughed. "My sister," he remarked, "is full of war. . . . Rather fuller—like a good many of those who have stayed behind—than you fellows. . . ."
"It's very much nicer," said Vane with a laugh, "to kill—even a Boche—in imagination than in reality. . . . Though I've seen many men," he added thoughtfully, "go blood mad."
"Do you remember that description of Kipling's," said Sir James, "of the scrap between the Black Tyrone and the Pathans? Mulvaney was sick, and Ortheris cursed, and Learoyd sang hymns—wasn't it?"
"I've seen them all those ways," said Vane thoughtfully, "and the worst of the lot are the silent ones. . . . There was one fellow I had who never uttered a word from the time we went over till the finish, and he never—if he could avoid it—struck a man anywhere except in the stomach. . . . And incidentally he could quote more from the Bible than most Bishops. . . . In fact, if he ever did speak, so I'm told, when he was fighting it was just to remark, 'And the Lord said'—as he stabbed."