It was a warm day, the windows were closed, my valetudinarian hostess having a horror of draughts, and a cheery fire was blazing up the chimney. Boyce took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
"Dear old mother," said he, "you keep this room like an oven."
"It is you who have got so excited talking, dear," said Mrs. Boyce. "I'm sure it can't be good for your heart. It is just the same with me. I remember I had to speak quite severely to Mary a week—no, to-day's Tuesday—ten days ago, and I had dreadful palpitations afterwards and broke out into a profuse perspiration and had to send for Doctor Miles."
"Now, that's funny," said I. "When I'm excited about anything I grow quite cold."
Boyce lit a cigarette and laughed. "I don't see where the excitement in the present case comes in. Mother started an interesting hare, and I followed it up. Anyhow—" he threw himself on the sofa, blew a kiss to his mother in the most charming way in the world, and smiled on me—"anyhow, to see you two in this dearest bit of dear old England is like a dream. And I'm not going to think of the waking up. I want all the cushions and the lavender and the neat maid's caps and aprons—I said to Mary this morning when she drew my curtains: 'Stay just there and let me look at you so that I can realise I'm at home and not in my little grey trench in West Flanders'—she got red and no doubt thought me a lunatic and felt inclined to squawk—but she stayed and looked jolly pretty and refreshing—only for a minute or two, after which I dismissed her—yes, my dears, I want everything that the old life means, the white table linen, the spring flowers, the scent of the air which has never known the taint of death, and all that this beautiful mother of England, with her knitting needles, stands for. I want to have a debauch of sweet and beautiful things."
"As far as I can give them you shall have them. My dear—" she dropped her knitting in her lap and looked over at him tragically—"I quite forgot to ask. Did Mary put bath-salts, as I ordered, into your bath this morning?"
Leonard threw away his cigarette and slapped his leg.
"By George!" he cried. "That explains it. I was wondering where the Dickens that smell of ammonia came from."
"If you use it every day it makes your skin so nice and soft," remarked Mrs. Boyce.
He laughed, and made the obvious jest on the use of bath-salts in the trenches.