Mrs. Braiding had left an agreeable modest fire--fit
for cold April--in the drawing-room. He had just sat down in front of
it and was tranquillising himself in the familiar harmonious beauty
of the apartment (which, however, did seem rather insipid after the
decorative excesses of Queen's room), when he heard footsteps on
the little stairway from the upper floor. Mrs. Braiding entered the
drawing-room.
This was a Mrs. Braiding very different from the Mrs. Braiding of
1914, a shameless creature of more rounded contours than of old, and
not quite so spick and span as of old. She was carrying in her arms
that which before the war she could not have conceived herself as
carrying. The being was invisible in wraps, but it was there; and she
seemed to have no shame for it, seemed indeed to be proud of it and
defiant about it.
Braiding's military career had been full of surprises. He had expected
within a few months of joining the colours to be dashing gloriously
and homicidally at panic-stricken Germans across the plains of
Flanders, to be, in fact, saving the Empire at the muzzle of rifle
and the point of bayonet. In truth, he found that for interminable,
innumerable weeks his job was to save the Empire by cleaning harness
on the East Coast of England--for under advice he had transferred to
the artillery.
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