“Defeat,” he reported hoarsely, when he had given in a woman’s name. “Utter defeat! Look!” He held up the stump of his sword. “I broke this on her gin-bottle.”
“So? We try again,” said the impassive Chief Seraph. Again he beckoned, and there stepped forward that very Imp whom Death had transferred from the N.C.D.
“Go you!” said the Seraph. “We must deal with a fool according to her folly. Have you pride enough?”
There was no need to ask. The messenger’s face glowed and his nostrils quivered with it. Scarcely pausing to salute, he poised and dived, and the papers on the desks spun beneath the draught of his furious vans.
St. Peter nodded high approval. “I see!” he said. “He’ll work on her pride to steady her. By all means—‘if by all means,’ as my good Paul used to say. Only it ought to read ‘by any manner of possible means.’ Excellent!”
“It’s difficult, though,” a soft-eyed Patience whispered. “I fail again and again. I’m only fit for an old-maid’s tea-party.”
Once more the record flashed—a multiple-urgent appeal on behalf of a few thousand men, worn-out body and soul. The Patience was detailed.
“Oh, me!” she sighed, with a comic little shrug of despair, and took the void softly as a summer breeze at dawning.
“But how does this come under the head of Domestic Casualties? Those men were in the trenches. I heard the mud squelch,” said St. Peter.
“Something wrong with the installation—as usual. Waves are always jamming here,” the Seraph replied.