He
hurried past them, head down, and ran up the steps of the Ministry
of Munitions. From that point of vantage he turned, shaken with
amusement, to see the pair advancing slowly towards Westminster,
their old-fashioned skirts floating round them, still pointing
eagerly at the barkless trees. Had they come from some piny region
where the plane is not? Anyway the tension of the day was less.
He repeated the tale to Aubrey Mannering a few minutes later, when
they had turned together into Birdcage Walk. But Aubrey scarcely
gave it the ghost of a smile. As to his old friend's enquiries about
his own work and plans, he answered them quite readily, but shortly,
without any expansion; with the manner, indeed, of one for whom
talk about himself had no sort of attraction. And as they passed
along the front of the barracks, where a few men were drilling,
Chicksands, struck by his companion's silence, turned a sudden look
upon him. Mannering's eyes were absently and yet intently fixed on
the small squads of drilling men.
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