Lancaster was whistling softly. "'Three blind mice—three blind mice; see how they run.' Well, Jack, I'll lay you three to one in anything you like on Margaret."
"In my country," said Browne, yawning, "the sun goes down in the fall of the year and never comes up again. The Arctic Sea is all shifting ice pack, the land all white drifts, and you think the night is never going to end. Yet it does; the sun comes up in the spring, and the mosquito season begins. Perhaps things will come out all right even in this England."
"Perhaps," answered Branscombe. "How long is it, Browne, since you joined the Guard—you're only a recruit, eh?"
"Thirty-one days and thirty-one nights," said Browne, "and it feels like thirty-one years. Another month of your London will make me a doddering old patriarch."
"Another month?" Branscombe rose and walked away with a sigh.
"Another month!" echoed young Lancaster.
"Why, gentlemen," came a voice from the upper stairway. "Are the Queen's Blackguards so far gone as that? All out of curl, no swagger—like a covey of widows?"
Lancaster turned with an acid smile to the civilian.
"Who the deuce are you?"
"I have the honour," said the civilian grinning, "to be her Majesty's Chief Poisoner."