little Ticknor and his smaller wife, and I sat facing across a small
deal table with a stuttering oil-lamp between us. In a house not far
away some Orthodox Jews, arrayed in purple and green and orange, with
fox-fur around the edges of their hats, were drunk and celebrating
noisily the Feast of Esther; so you can work out the exact date if
you're curious enough. The time was nine p.m. We had talked the Anzac
hurricane-drive through Palestine all over again from the beginning,
taking world-known names in vain and doing honour to others that will
stay unsung for lack of recognition, when one of those unaccountable
pauses came, and for the sake of breaking silence, Mabel Ticknor asked a
question. She was a little, plucky, pale-faced thing whom you called
instinctively by her first name at the end of half an hour--a sort of
little mother of loose-ended men, who can make silk purses out of sows'
ears, and wouldn't know how to brag if she were tempted.

"Say, Jim," she asked, turning her head quickly like a bird toward Grim
on my left, "what's your verdict about that man from Syria that Roger
took in a cab to the Sikh hospital? I'm out a new pair of riding
breeches if Roger has to pay the bill for him. I want my money's worth.
Tell me his story."

"Go ahead and buy the breeches, Mabel. I'll settle that bill," he
answered.

"No, you won't, Jim! You're always squandering money. Half your pay
goes to the scallywags you've landed in jail. This one's up to Roger
and me; we found him."

Grim laughed.