“Right-o!” said Pink, who had brought back a phrase or two from the British.
It was not until they were in the car that Pink said:
“I think you're a friend of Miss Cardew's, aren't you?”
“I know Miss Cardew,” said Willy Cameron, guardedly. And they were both rather silent for a time.
That night proved to be a significant one for them both, as it happened. They struck up a curious sort of friendship, based on a humble admiration on Pink's part, and with Willy Cameron on sheer hunger for the society of his kind. He had been suffering a real mental starvation. He had been constantly giving out and getting nothing in return.
Pink developed a habit of dropping into the pharmacy when he happened to be nearby. He was rather wistfully envious of that year in the camp, when Lily Cardew and Cameron had been together, and at first it was the bond of Lily that sent him to the shop. In the beginning the shop irritated him, because it seemed an incongruous background for the fiery young orator. But later on he joined the small open forum in the back room, and perhaps for the first time in his idle years he began to think. He had made the sacrifice of his luxurious young life to go to war, had slept in mud and risked his body and been hungry and cold and often frightfully homesick. And now it appeared that a lot of madmen were going to try to undo all that he had helped to do. He was surprised and highly indignant. Even a handful of agitators, it seemed, could do incredible harm.
One night he and Willy Cameron slipped into a meeting of a Russian Society, wearing old clothes, which with Willy was not difficult, and shuffling up dirty stairs without molestation. They came away thoughtful.
“Looks like it's more than talk,” Pink said, after a time.
“They're not dangerous,” Willy Cameron said. “That's talk. But it shows a state of mind. The real incendiaries don't show their hand like that.”
“You think it's real, then?”