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 handkerchiefs and small flags, pressing forward to shake hands and to say, "Vivent les Anglais!"

It was out of that crowd that a girl came and stood in front of us, with a wave of her hand.

"Good morning, British officers! I'm English—or Irish, which is good enough. Welcome to Lille."

Fortune shook hands with her first and said very formally, in his mocking way:

"How do you do? Are you by chance my long-lost sister? Is there a strawberry-mark on your left arm?"

She laughed with a big, open-mouthed laugh, on a contralto note that was good to hear.

"I'm everybody's sister who speaks the English tongue, which is fine to the ears of me after four years in Lille. Eileen O'Connor, by your leave, gentlemen."

"Not Eileen O'Connor of Tipperary?" asked Fortune gravely. "You know the Long, Long Way, of course?"

"Once of Dublin," said the girl, "and before the war of Holland Street, Kensington, in the village of London. Oh, to hear the roar of 'buses in the High Street and to see the glint of sunlight on the Round Pond!"

She was a tall girl, shabbily dressed in an old coat and skirt, with a bit of fur round her neck and hat, but with a certain look of elegance in the thin line of her figure and the poise of her head. Real Irish, by the look of her dark eyes and a rather irregular nose, and humourous lips. Not pretty, in the English way, but spirited, and with some queer charm in her.

Wickham Brand was holding her hand.

"Good Lord! Eileen O'Connor? I used to meet you, years ago, at the Wilmots—those funny tea-parties in Chelsea."

"With farthing buns and cigarettes, and young boys with big ideas!"

The girl laughed with a kind of wonderment, and stood