choosers.'

'Beggars?'

'I've never been here before. If you knew'--a shadow coming over
him--'what it is to be in such a place without a friend. I was crazy
with glee, when I got my leave, at the thought of seeing London at last,
but after wandering its streets for four hours, I would almost have been
glad to be back in the trenches.'

'If you knew,' he has said, but indeed the old lady knows.

'That's my quandorum too, Kenneth.'

He nods sympathetically.

'I'm sorry for you, you poor old body,' shouldering his kit. 'But I see
no way out for either of us.'

A cooing voice says, 'Do you not?'

'Are you at it again!'

She knows that it must be now or never. She has left her biggest guns
for the end. In her excitement she is rising up and down on her toes.

'Kenneth, I've heard that the thing a man on leave longs for more than
anything else is a bed with sheets, and a bath.'

'You never heard anything truer.'