rting. Sometimes only the
Favourite Piper plays, striding up and down the little bowling-green at
the top here, but not often, because the work of keeping him going
interferes with the disembarkation. We never let the Highlanders go
abroad, because Murray loves them so. He is afraid lest something should
happen to them. Were the Highlanders your favourites?"

Kew wrote on the slate: "No, the Egyptian Camel Corps."

The lady nodded. "We loved them too, but of course they lived on the
other side of the pond, and sometimes they and the Sepoys and the
Soudanese had to insurrect. Somebody had to, you know, but we regretted
the Egyptian Camel Corps awfully. I hope you don't think us silly....
Murray was always a childish person. I hope I am too. The bowling-green
gave us a lot of trouble to make; it is nice and flat, isn't it? We trim
it with nail-scissors."

It was a good bowling-green, about twelve inches by six. There were some
marbles on it.

"It has historical associations," said the mother of Murray. "It was
here that Drake played when the Armada was sighted. Of course that was
before our time, but sometimes, on a moonlit summer night, we used to lie
down on our fronts and see his little ghost haunting the green. We used
to bring our young sailors here, and inspire them with stories about
Drake. The sailors used to stand on the green, and we put up railings
made of matches all round, and civilians used to stand in great
breathless crowds outside the railings watching. Chessmen, of course.
Murray used to make the civilians arrive in motors, so as to make ruts in
the road. Somehow it was always rather splendid and real to have ruts in
the road."

There was a long pause.

"Later on, of course, things got more grown-up. The last time we played
before the War--when War was already in sight--we shipped an
unprecedented mass of troops to that peninsula, and had a wonderful
battle. You can still see the trenches and gun emplacements; I cleared
them out yesterday. Murray joined the Army in that first August, and
whenever he came home after that he was somehow ashamed of these things.
I quite understood that. When I am having tea with the Vicar's wife, or
cutting out shirts for the soldiers, I sometimes blush a little to think
how old I am, and to think of the things I do at home with Murray. I am
sure he felt just the same when he was with other men. But his last
letter was young again. He wrote that the War should cease