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Updated: June 28, 2025
At the desk, Ayling experienced a momentary surprise to find himself actually expected. "Mr. Ayling? Yes, sir. Your room is ready, I believe." The clerk rang a bell, and began to give instructions about Mr. Ayling's luggage.
"Never mind," said Ayling, who was not thinking of Miss Peggy at all, but of her parents, young Major Harry Lonsdale, and his pretty wife. He remembered her as a bride Bessie, the major had called her a graceful young creature with brown hair and brown-flecked eyes, already at that age a charming hostess in the fine old house Harry Lonsdale had inherited from his father.
"Why in thunder can't you keep your filthy tea-kettle in its own place, instead of bringing it here to draw fire?" inquired Mr. Cockerell, not altogether unreasonably, as Ayling and his satellites passed along the trench bearing the offending weapon, with water-jacket aboil, back to its official residence. "It is all for your good, my little man," explained Ayling loftily.
Ayling, who had been struggling with a strong inclination to do so for some time, promptly complied. "Just like the Crystal Palace on a benefit night!" observed his guide admiringly, as the landscape was lit up with a white glare. "Now you can see your position beautifully. You can fire obliquely in this direction, and then do a first-class enfilade if the trenches get rushed."
Wounded officers have quite superseded Pekinese, I am told." "Women certainly are the most extraordinary creatures," mused Ayling, a platoon commander of "B." "In private life I am a beak at a public school " "What school?" inquired several voices. Ayling gave the name, found that there were two of the school's old boys present, and continued
And then, propelled by that silence toward the door, she put out her hand and knocked softly. There was no response. She repeated the knock twice and only that pervading silence answered her. She took hold of the knob and turned it without a sound; the door gave inward and she stepped inside the room. The bed faced her, and Ayling was lying there, on his side.
She was thinking how absurd it would be to object, and how equally absurd it seemed to say yes. It was so nice to have some one think of her as he thought of himself, simply, normally, humanly, as Dick Ayling seemed to have thought of her from the first. Then abruptly she accepted his simplification. "I'll go," she said. "Good!
Our last casualty was Ayling, who left us under somewhat unusual circumstances. Accordingly orders were issued for a Flying Matinée, or trench raid. Each battalion in the Division was to submit a scheme, and the battalion whose scheme was adjudged the best was to be accorded the honour so said the Practical Joke Department of carrying out the scheme in person.
At present he is meditating a design for painting himself grass-green and climbing a tree thence to take a comprehensive and unobserved survey of the enemy's dispositions. He will do it, too, if he gets a chance! The machine-gunners, also, contrive to chase monotony by methods of their own. Listen to Ayling, concocting his diurnal scheme of frightfulness with a colleague.
Just a week later, to the day, Ayling stepped into a telephone-booth, looked up Mrs. Lonsdale's number, and telephoned. He had not counted upon loneliness. At forty-five Bessie Lonsdale had encountered one of those universal experiences which invariably give us, as individuals, so strong a sense of surprise.
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