Page 60 (1/1)

She would remember for ever the talk they had on the balcony that day while Antas falling

They were standing there, she and John Conway and Sutton, looking over the station and the railway lines to the open country beyond: the fields, the tall slender trees, the lowand dark Round the corner of the balcony they could see into the Place below; it was filled with a thick black crowd of refugees Antas falling Presently the ao over there to the station with their stretchers and carry out the wounded Meanwhile they waited

John brooded His face was heavy and soh"

"What isn't?"

"What we're doing here Going to all those little tin-pot places The real fighting isn't down there They ought to send us to Antwerp"

"I suppose they send us where they think we're most wanted"

"I don't believe they do We were fools not to have insisted on going to Antwerp, instead of letting ourselves be stuck here in a rotten side show"

"We've had enough to do, anyhow," said Sutton

"And there isn't anybody but us and Mac to do it," Charlotte said

John's eyebroisted "Yes; but we're not in it I want to be in it In the big thing; the big dangerous thing"

Sutton sighed and got up and left the of the door

"Does it strike you," he said, "that Billy isn't very keen?"

"No It doesn't What do you et an indoor job"

"That's because they're short of surgeons He only wants to do what's most useful"

"I didn't say he had cold feet"

"Of course he hasn't Billy would go to Antwerp like a shot if they'd let hiot up and went away"

"He'd go But he wouldn't enjoy it"

"Oh, don't talk about 'enjoying'"

"Sharlie, you don't mean to say that you're not keen?"

"No It's only that I don't care as much as I did about what you call the romance of it; and I do care more about the solid work It see as it's done"