"Move along there, young feller, don't make a crowd!"
"The next is ours, isn't it, Miss Dainton?" inquired a decorous little voice from under my elbow.
"Time you were in bed, young 'un," Crabtree retorted menacingly.
O'Rane wormed his way past me and presented himself. In a moment's hush I heard the sharp tap of the leader's baton; for the last time Crabtree roared his wearisome "Move along there, please," and, as the music began, Sonia glided out on his arm into the middle of the room, barely turning to cry over her shoulder, "Come back later!"
"My duty's done, Raney," I said. "Come upstairs."
"I shall stay here a bit," he answered, following Sonia round the room with his eyes.
"Please yourself. You can't smoke here, and there's some old Green Chartreuse upstairs."
"Damn Green Chartreuse!" he returned.
"You shouldn't say that even in joke," I told him, as I started to elbow my way back to my old corner.
Bertrand I found was at supper, and our retreat had been invaded by a score of men who by rights ought to have been dancing. They were chiefly Tom's gladiatorial friends from Oriel, now scattering to various units of the Army—Penfold to the 17th Lancers, Moray to the Irish Guards and Kent to the Rifle Brigade. Of the others I knew Prendergast of Melton and New College, who was now a clerk in the Foreign Office and a purveyor of cheap mystery, and we were soon joined by Sinclair and Mayhew. Both were combining business with pleasure, for the former was playing for Yorkshire against the M. C. C. at Lord's, and the latter had hurried townwards to negotiate a position on the staff of "The Wicked World" as soon as his last Oxford term was over. Stragglers came and went, but our numbers remained steady and the group was completed by the arrival of Loring.