Miss Ferriby stood, pen in hand, and laughed at the confusion on the table in front of her. She was eminently practical, and quite without that self-consciousness which in a bygone day took the irritating form of coyness. Major White, with whom she shook hands _en camarade_, gazed at her solemnly.
“Who are the Haberdashers' Assistants?” he asked.
Miss Ferriby sat down with a grave face. “Oh, it is a splendid charity,” she answered. “Tony will tell you all about it. It is an association of which the object is to induce people to give up riding on Saturday afternoons, and to lend their bicycles to haberdashers' assistants who cannot afford to buy them for themselves. Papa is patron.”
Cornish looked quickly from one to the other. He had always felt that Major White was not quite of the world in which Joan and he moved. The major came into it at times, looked around him, and then moved away again into another world, less energetic, less advanced, less rapid in its changes. Cornish had never sought to interest his friend in sundry good works in which Joan, for instance, was interested, and which formed a delightful topic for conversation at teatime.
“It is so splendid,” said Joan, gathering up her papers, “to feel that one is really doing something.”
And she looked up into White's face with an air of grave enthusiasm which made him drop his eye-glass.
Cornish had already seated himself at the table, and was folding the addressed newspaper wrappers over circulars printed on thick note-paper. This seemed a busy world into which White had stepped. He looked rather longingly at the newspaper wrappers and the circulars, and then lapsed into the contemplation of Joan's neat fingers as she too fell to the work.
“We saw all about you,” said the girl, in her bright, decisive way, “in the newspapers. Papa read it aloud. He is always reading things aloud now, out of the _Times_. He thinks it is good practice for the platform, I am sure. We were all”--she paused and banged her energetic fist down upon a pile of folded circulars which seemed to require further pressure--“very proud, you know, to know you.”
“Good Lord!” ejaculated White, fervently.
“Well, why not?” asked Miss Ferriby, looking up. She had expressive eyes, and they now flashed almost angrily. “All English people----” she began, and broke off suddenly, throwing aside the papers and rising quickly to her feet. Her eyes were fixed on White's tunic. “Is that a medal?” she asked, hurrying towards him. “Oh, how splendid! Look, Tony, look! A medal! Is it”--she paused, looking at it closely--“is it--the Victoria Cross?” she asked, and stood looking from one man to the other, her eyes glistening with something more than excitement.