agine! Week
in, week out. Every meal.... and trying not to look...! She said it
made her want to scream."

"I should certainly scream," said Mrs. Gascoigne, who had finished her
tea and was preparing to take her departure. "Now I must be off. I've
promised to go and sit with Mrs. Daubney. She's laid up, poor thing,
and it's so dull for her all alone in those stuffy rooms." She held
out her hand to Betty. "I hope we shall see a lot more of each other,"
she said prettily. "We're going to show you some of the walks round
here, and we'll take our tea out to the woods.... I hope you'll be
happy up here."

The door closed behind her, and Eileen Cavendish explored the room in
search of cigarettes. "Sybil Gascoigne is a dear," she observed.

"On the little table, there," said the hostess. "In that box. Do you
smoke, Mrs. Standish?" Mrs. Standish, it appeared, did not. "Throw me
one, Eileen." She caught and lit it with an almost masculine neatness.
"Yes," she continued, "she's perfectly sweet. Her husband is a senior
Post-captain, and there isn't an atom of 'side' or snobbishness in her
composition. She is just as sweet to that hopelessly dull and dreary
Daubney woman as she is to--well, to charming and well-bred attractions
like ourselves!" The speaker laughingly blew a cloud of smoke and
turned to Betty. "In a sense, this war has done us good. You've never
lived in a Dockyard Port, though. You don't know the insane snobberies
and the ludicrous little castes that flourished in pre-war days."

"I dare say you're right," said Eileen Cavendish. She moved idly about
the room examining photographs and puffing her cigarette. "But even
the War isn't going to make me fall on the neck of a woman I don't
like. But I'm talking like a cat. It's not seeing Bill for so
long...."

Mrs. Clavering smiled. "No," she said, "I agree there are limits. But
up here, what does it matter if a woman's husband is an Engineer or a
Paymaster or a Commander or only an impecunious Lieutenant like
mine--as long as she is nice? Yet if it weren't for people like Sybil
Gascoigne we should all be clinging to our ridiculous little pre-war
sets, and talking of branches and seniority till we died of loneliness
and boredom with our aristocratic noses in the air.... As it is, I
don't believe even Sybil Gascoigne could have done it if she hadn't
been the Honourable Mrs. Gascoigne. That carried her over some pretty
rough ground, chil