oo cross to answer.

"We didn't," said May Dashwood. "I'm sorry!"

"No, we couldn't find it," said Lady Dashwood.

"You really couldn't," repeated Mrs. Potten. "Well, I wonder---- But how
kind of you!"

Now, Mrs. Potten rarely saw the Warden, and this fact made her prize him
all the more. Mrs. Potten's weakness for men was very weak for the
Warden, so much so that for the moment she forgot the loss of her note,
and--thinking of Wardens--burst into a long story about the Heads of
colleges she had known personally and those she had not known
personally.

Her assumption that Heads of colleges were of any importance was all the
more distasteful to Boreham because May Dashwood was listening.

"Come along, Mrs. Potten," he said crossly; "we shall have to have the
lamps lit if we wait any longer."

But they were not her lamps that would have to be lit, burning _her_
oil, and Mrs. Potten released the Warden with much regret.

"So the poor little note was never found," she said, as she held out her
hand for good-bye. "I know it's a trifle, but in these days everything
is serious, everything! And after I had scribbled off my note to you
from Eliston's I thought I might have given Miss Scott two ten-shilling
notes instead of one, just by mistake, and that she hadn't noticed, of
course."

"I thought of that," said Lady Dashwood, "and I asked Mrs. Harding; but
she said that she had got the correct notes--thirty shillings."

"Well, good-bye," said Mrs. Potten. "I am sorry to have troubled
everybody, but in war time one has to be careful. One never knows what
may happen. Strange things have happened and will happen. Don't you
think so, Warden?"

"Stranger than perhaps we think of," said the Warden, and he raised his
hat to go.

"Come, Bernard," said Mrs. Potten, "I must try and tear you away.
Good-bye, good-bye!" and even then she lingered and looked at the
Warden.

"Good-bye, Marian," said Lady Dashwood, firmly.

"I am afraid you are very tired," whispered May in her aunt's ear, as
they turned up the Broad.

"Rather tired," said Lady Dashwood. "Too tired to hear Marian's list of
names, nothing but names!"

They walked on a few steps, and then there came a sound of whirring in
the sky. It was a sound new to Oxford, but which had lately become
frequent. All three looked up. An aeroplane was skimming low over
steeples, towers, and ancient chimney stacks, going home to Port Meadow,
like a bird going home to roost at