"Well, since you're so clever, what's the answer?"
"Not so very many miles from Charing Cross," he hazarded.
"Wonderful!" she said, laying her head back and smiling. Mr. Spokesly admired the pretty throat. "You ought to be in the secret service. Perhaps you are," she added.
"Of course," he agreed. "They've sent me out to see where all the nice London girls have got to. But am I right?"
She nodded.
"Haverstock Hill," she said quietly.
"No! Do you know Mafeking Road? When I was a kid we lived at sixty-eight."
"Yes, I know it. Don't you live round there now?"
"No, not now. We live down Twickenham way now."
And Mr. Spokesly began to tell his own recent history, touching lightly upon the pathos of Eastern exile, the journey home to join up, and his conviction that after all he would be a fool to go soldiering while the ships had to be kept running. And he added as a kind of immaterial postscript: