The same thought struck Alf as they reached the trench above.
"Company 'Edquarters is up there," he said, with a jerk of the thumb. "We'd best go the other way."
Isobel, making shameless play with her eyes, laid a hand for one moment on Alf's arm.
"What is a Company Headquarters?" she asked. "I want to see it."
A subtle, faint perfume reached Alf's nostrils and thrilled him all through. Now that she was in the full light of day, he could take in her exquisite quality. Her clothes, though obviously expensive, were too plain to suit Bill's untutored eye, but Alf, possessing by some queer freak of nature an unexpectedly true taste, saw in her the apotheosis of all that was most admirable in women. By all the laws of probability his tastes should have been for bright colors and nodding feathers, but such decorations left him cold, while this girl struck him dumb. She was simply the embodiment of his ideal.
"Now I'm here," she went on, "I want to see for myself just what you poor men have to put up with. How awful it must be to live in a trench like this. And can't you show me a German?"
She smiled up into Alf's face.
That smile galvanized him as before, into a display of rash gallantry.
"So you shall, miss," he said. "Just step along the trench 'ere, and we'll show you all we can."
Isobel surveyed the trench doubtfully and then looked down at her delicately shod feet.