stupid says matters in
the slightest. And--and Toby."

"'Toby'?"

"I mean Lord Beauvayse."

"Tell him I quite approve. He should know that in this matter it was for
me to decide."

"Certainly, dear."

"Whose is the other objecting voice?"

"The Chief thinks I ... we ... it ... I rather fancy that he used the word
'precipitate' in expressing his opinion."

"Refer him to me if he expresses it again."

"Of course, dear, since you ..."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye, dear. If Biddy Bawne hadn't been a nun," reflected Lady Hannah,
as she went out of the Matron's office and back to her patients, who had
long ago dined, "I think she would have made rather a despotic Empress.
'_Refer him to me_,' indeed. What is it, Sergeant? Don't say I'm rung up
again."

But the one-armed porter was positive on the subject, and her little
ladyship went back. This last communication proved a puzzling one.

"You there?"

"I am Lady Hannah Wrynche. Where are you?"

There was a brief hesitation. A thickish man's voice said:

"I don't know as that matters."

"Who are you?"

There was another hesitation. Then the stranger parried with a question:

"You write them weekly screeds in the _Siege Gazette_?"

"I am responsible for some of the social paragraphs. Kindly say who is
speaking?"

"Nobody that matters much. Can you tell me where Miss Mildare lives?"

"Not without knowing who you are."

"You may call me an old friend of hers," aid the thickish, lisping voice,
with a sluggish chuckle in it that the little woman at the other end of
the wire had heard ... where?...

"If you are an old friend of the young lady you mention, how is it you
don't know her address?" she demanded.

"Keep her address all you want to. Only next time you come alongside her
give her a message for me. Ask her if she remembers the Free State Hotel
on the veld, three days' trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was her
friend?"

Lady Hannah repeated:

"'And Bough, who was her friend.' You are Bough----?"

"_Click!_" Somebody had hung up the receiver.

Lady Hannah spent another bad night, not wholly due to the indigestible
nature of a dinner of mule colloped, and locusts fried in batter by
Nixey's chef. Staggering in the course of disturbed and changeful dreams,
under the impact of sufficient bricks and mortar to rebuild toppledown
Gueldersdorp, being hauled over mountains of coals, and getting into whole
Gulf Streams of hot water, she was slumb