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it. Section Officer Robertson looked up from
Punch
as he passed her. He looked like a little boy, she thought, disappointed because nobody would play with him. It was too bad.
    She got up from her chair. “I’ll come and see your fish,” she said, “if I may. Where did you say it was?”

Chapter Two
    Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless folly of the time!
      We shall grow old apace, and die
      Before we know our liberty.
And, as a vapour or a drop of rain,
Once lost, can ne’er be found again,
      So when or you or I are made
      A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
      All love, all liking, all delight
      Lies drowned with us in endless night.
Then, while times serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.
    ROBERT HERRICK, 1648
    Marshall turned to her in pleased surprise. “Would you really like to see it?”
    “I don’t mind,” she said.
    “Will you listen if I tell you how I caught it?”
    “Not for very long. But I’d quite to like to see it.”
    “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got it in the dining-room.”
    It was the first time that he had spoken to Section Officer Robertson. She had been with the Wing for about a month, but the W.A.A.F. officers kept themselves very much to themselves. They used the ante-room and lunched with the officers, but they had their own sitting-room in their own quarters to relax in. In the mess and in the ante-room they were carefully correct, and brightly cheerful, and rather inhuman; when they wanted to read the
Picturegoer
or mend their underwear they went to their own place to do it. It was suggested to them when they took commissions that good W.A.A.F. officers did not contract personal relationships with young men on their own station. As candidates for commissions they were serious about their work and desperately keen about the honour of the Service, and so some of them didn’t.
    Marshall took the girl through into the deserted dining-room. The fish lay recumbent on its dish, its sombre colours dulled. Death had not improved it; it leered at them with sordid cruelty, and it was smelling rather strong.
    Section Officer Robertson said brightly: “I say, what a lovely one! How much does it weigh?”
    “Eleven and a quarter pounds.”
    “Did you have an awful job landing it?”
    “Not bad. I had it on a wire trace; I was spinning for it.”
    “In this river here?”
    He nodded. “Up at Coldstone Mill.”
    “Oh, I know that,” she said. “A great tall building in the fields.”
    “That’s the place,” he said. “I got it in the pool below the mill.”
    “It must have been lovely out there this afternoon,” she said. “It’s been such a heavenly day.”
    Recollection came to him suddenly: the black-haired girl in the grey jersey. “I saw a lot of W.A.A.F.s this morning out in the field doing physical jerks,” he said. “I saw them from my window as I was getting up. Was that you drilling them?”
    She nodded. “I took them out because it was so lovely. Were you just getting up then?”
    He said indignantly: “I didn’t get to bed till three!”
    She laughed. “Sorry.” She turned back to the fish.
    “It really is a beauty.” That, after all, was what she had come to say.
    She had overdone it. Marshall looked at it with clearer eyes. “I don’t know that I quite agree,” he said. “I think it looks ugly as sin, and it’s starting to ponk a bit. Be better with a lemon in its mouth.”
    She laughed again, relaxed. “Well—yes. We’d better open a window if you’re going to leave it here. What are you going to do with it?”
    “Have it for lunch to-morrow. Mollie, in the kitchen, said she’d stuff it for me. Would you like a bit?”
    “I’d love it. I’ve never eaten pike.”
    “All right—I’ll tell them.” He hesitated. “I say, what’s your name? Who shall I say, to give it to?”
    “Robertson,” she said. “I do