"But that's not the point," she interrupted. "What I want to know is why do I bounce off my chair like an india-rubber ball when he buzzes?" she demanded relentlessly. "Why do I want to please him? Why do I want to kick myself when I make mistakes? Why—Oh! Tommy," she broke off, "if you only had a brain as well as a stomach," and she looked across at him reproachfully.
"Perhaps it's because he never complains," suggested Thompson, as he placed his knife and fork at the "all clear" angle, and leaned back in his chair with a sigh of contentment.
"You don't complain, Tommy," she retorted; "but you could buzz yourself to blazes without getting me even to look up."
For fully a minute there was silence; Gladys Norman continued to gaze down at the débris to which she had reduced her roll.
"No," she continued presently, "there is something else. I've noticed the others; they're just the same." She paused, then suddenly looking across at him she enquired, "What is loyalty, Tommy?"
"Standing up and taking off your hat when they play 'God Save the
King,'" he replied glibly.
She laughed, and deftly flicked a bread pill she had just manufactured, catching Thompson beneath the left eye and causing him to blink violently.
"You're a funny old thing," she laughed. "You know quite well what I mean, only you're too stupid to realise it. Look at the Innocent— for him the Chief is the only man in all the world. Then there's Tims. He'd get up in the middle of the night and drive the Chief to blazes, and hang the petrol. Then there's you and me."
Thompson drew a cigarette-case from his pocket.
"I think I know why it is," she said, nodding her pretty head wisely. She paused, and as Thompson made no comment she continued: "It's because he's human, warm flesh and blood."