"Weston," she said, "I do believe you are growing young. I detect a strain of romance that you have not hitherto exhibited. It shows how much influence is possessed by a Quartermaster-Sergeant in the Guards."
I closed the shop early on the Saturday. The Wintertons promised to look after Mr. Hillier at Gloucester Place. My train on the Great Eastern was crowded, although excursion fares had long since been cancelled, and a guard put me in a first-class compartment where the passenger immediately opposite was Colonel Edgington, formerly of Chislehurst, and for some time absent from my memory. Apparently I too was but vaguely in his recollection, for he grasped me warmly by the hand, assured me he was delighted to see me again, offered congratulations on my appearance of good health. I was about to speak of the Hilliers, when he started the topic of himself and his own work, and the subject occupied the whole of the journey. It appeared he was engaged at the War Office, that he had not a single moment to call his own, that he was working as he had never worked before, that he was now on the way to a point in the Eastern Counties which he could not mention (but I guessed it by the ticket that was visible in the palm of his glove) there to engage upon a task that he was not at liberty to disclose (he told me all about it ere we reached Chelmsford). The others in the compartment looked at me with respect as we chatted.
"And tell me, dear lady," he said, towards the end of the journey. "I'd like to know something about yourself. Busily engaged, I'll wager, at this period of stress and turmoil. Eh, what! Funds, and societies, and associations, and so forth. I've seen your name in the papers, over and over again."
"How was it spelt?"
"In the way you always spell it," he answered, promptly.
"But how do you spell my name?"
"To tell you the truth," he confessed, "I've a most remarkable gift for identifying faces, but I can't always find the right label. Give me a clue, in your own case."
"Chislehurst," I answered. "The Hillier family. A fire, and your kindness when it happened."
He occupied the rest of the time by blessing his soul, and reprimanding his memory, and explaining that his thoughts were occupied with important affairs. He was incredulous regarding my news concerning his old friend—
"Not working in the Arsenal? Good Lord! Whatever will happen next in these times?"