"Lovely woman!" thought I. "Fit soil for a romantic seed! Farewell
reserve and half-told truth!" I then proceeded to describe unto her
things unattempted yet in Field, Garrison, or High Angle Ballistics.
Her first question (pointing to the recoil-controlling gear of No.
2 gun), whether _both_ barrels were fired at once, gave me a cue
priceless and not to be missed. My imagination held good for full
fifteen minutes, and by the time we were ambling back to the fence I
had got on to our new sensitive electrical plant for registering the
sound, height, range, speed and direction of hostile aircraft. The
fluent ease of it intoxicated, and I was lucky not to mar the whole
by working in something crude and trite about the pilot's name.

She departed, smiling radiant thanks, and I thought no more of it
until this morning, when Post Orderly handed me the following note:--

"DEAR SIR,--It was too kind of you to tell me all about your guns
the other day, and it was too bad of me to let you. I ought to have
mentioned that my husband is _the_ Colonel Strokes, of the High Angle
Ordnance Council. One of his favourite remarks is that the one woman
of his acquaintance who knows more about artillery than a cow does of
mathematics is

"Very sincerely yours,

"EVELYN STROKES.

"P.S.--Do you by any chance write?"

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