"Neither it is, miss—not in that Salient. My error! They rushed us up and down that Western Front so fast, no wonder a feller gets mixed! I was hit in both places, though. Well, 'ere we are in good old 'Ammersmiff. This is where I 'ops off. Good-day, ladies! Keep the paper, and welcome."
"It's big news, isn't it?" said Liss, continuing to skim through the heavily leaded paragraph.
"I wonder why that man thought Cambrai was in the Salient," remarked Marjorie.
"Swank, I expect," said Liss. "Probably he hasn't been out at all—or wounded!"
"But he was wearing a silver badge," objected Marjorie, to whom all military geese were swans.
"Perhaps he pinched it," suggested Miss Lyle, who harboured few illusions concerning the male sex.
Her theory received entire corroboration a moment later. On folding up the newspaper before descending they discovered that Marjorie's vanity-bag, which was lying on the seat between them, had been neatly slit open and its entire contents extracted.
The pair turned and regarded one another silently. Liss was the first to speak.
"That brings us down to one and sevenpence," she remarked. "No wonder he didn't know where Cambrai was!"
IV