"As soon as I can get transferred to a service battalion."
Kestrell grimaced knowingly.
"Do they send lords out?" he inquired, with a wink to his supporters.
Loring, who had been spared the wit and urbanity of a contested election, turned suddenly white, and I, remembering the day fifteen years before when the news of his father's death in the Transvaal reached Oxford, pulled him back into his seat before he could reply.
O'Rane yawned and pulled his hands slowly out of his pockets.
"Dam' dull meeting, George," he observed. "What's the fellow's name? Kestrell? Bet you I enlist him within seven minutes."
"A fiver you don't," I whispered back.
He rose to his feet and slowly swept the circle of faces with his eyes, waiting deliberately to let the graceful debonair poise of his body be seen. The crowd watched him silently, as a music-hall audience awaits the development of a new turn; but he seemed indifferent to their interest and appeared to linger for a yet profounder depth of silence. Then with a quick turn of the head he faced Kestrell.
"Will you come to France with me?" he asked. "I am going as soon as possible, because the men there who are defending us and our women are heavily outnumbered. I don't care who made the war, but I do care about my friends being killed. You'll probably be killed if you come, but you'll have done your best—just as you would if a dozen hooligans knocked down a friend of yours and jumped on him. Will you come?"