"Well, it strikes me you ought to be if you're jogging round the country together," said the other, her eyes twinkling. "But if you're not, take warning, padre. A girl that talks about corsets in public isn't respectable, especially as she doesn't wear them herself, except in the evening, for the sake of other things. Or she used not to. But perhaps you know?"
Peter tried to look comfortable, but he was completely out of his depth. He finished his drink with a happy inspiration, and ordered another. That down, he began to feel more capable of entering into the spirit of these two. They were the sort he wanted to know, both of them, women about as different from those he had met as they could possibly be.
Another man dropped in after a while, so the talk became general. The atmosphere was very free and easy, bantering, careless, jolly, and Peter expanded in it. Julie led them all. She was never at a loss, and apparently had no care in the world.
The two girls and Peter went together to dinner and sat at the same table. They talked a good deal together, and Peter gathered they had come to know each other at a hospital in England. They were full of reminiscences.
"Do you remember ducking Pockett?" Teanie asked Julie.
"Lor', I should think I do! Tell Peter. He won't be horrified unless you go into details. If I cough, Solomon, you're to change the subject. Carry on, Teanie."
"Well, Pockett was a nurse of about the last limit. She was fearfully snobby, which nobody of that name ought to be, and she ruled her pros. with a rod of iron. I expect that was good for them, and I say nothing as to that, but she was a beast to the boys. We had some poor chaps in who were damnably knocked about, and one could do a lot for them in roundabout ways. Regulations are made to be broken in some cases, I think. But she was a holy terror. Sooner than call her, the boys would endure anything, but some of us knew, and once she caught Julie here…"
"It wasn't—it was you, Teanie."
"Oh, well, one of us, anyway, in her ward when she was on night duty, sitting with a poor chap who pegged out a few days after. It soothed him to sit and hold her hand. Well, anyway, she was furious and reported it. There was a bit of a row—had to be, I suppose, as it was against regulations—but thank God the P.M.O. knew his job, so there was only a strafe with the tongue in the cheek. However, we swore revenge, and we had it—eh, Julie?"
"We did. Go on. It was you who thought of it."