“Well,” she inquired, “having picked your brains, are they going to court-martial you for being absent without leave?”
“I cross to-night,” he said, leading her toward the Horse Guards’ Parade. “It’s Belgium, not France. I’m on the staff. My appointment will appear in the gazette to-morrow. That’s fine, but I’d rather——”
Irene stopped, almost in the middle of the road.
“And you’ll wear a cap with a red band and a golden lion, and those ducky little red tabs on the collar! Come at once, and buy them! I refuse to lunch with you otherwise.”
“A man must not wear the staff insignia until he is gazetted,” he reminded her.
“Oh!” She was pathetically disappointed.
“But, in my case,” he went on, “I am specifically ordered to travel in staff uniform, so, as I leave London at seven o’clock——”
“You can certainly lunch in all your glory,” she vowed. “There’s an empty taxi!”
Of course, it was pleasant to be on the staff, and thus become even more admired by Irene, if there is a degree surpassing that which is already superlative; but the fly in the ointment of Dalroy’s new career lay in the fact that the battle of the Aisne was just beginning, and every British heart throbbed with the hope that the Teuton hordes might be chased back to the frontier as speedily as they had rushed on Paris. Dalroy himself, an experienced soldier, though he had watched those grim columns pouring through the valley of the Meuse, yielded momentarily to the vision splendid. He longed to be there, taking part in the drive. Instead, he was being sent to Belgium, some shrewd head in the War Office having decided that his linguistic powers, joined to a recent first-hand knowledge of local conditions, would be far more profitably employed in Flanders than as a squadron leader in France.