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chair, and her alert, humorous, heart-shaped face which seemed to change so little with the years—at Dinah, that porcelain figurine of a woman, so exquisitely dressed, with fading red-gold hair—at his own dear Sylvia with her honey-coloured mane and eyelashes out to here, and her poised, dancer’s grace—at Mab, their darling, whose level green eyes were exactly like those in the portrait of Tibby at home, her smallness and her dignity and her unchildlike comprehension of the terrible world she had come to live in…. “Oh, yes,” said Jeff. “You thought I’d forgotten something, didn’t you? Well, that’s where you’re wrong.”
    He took out of his coat pocket a small parcel, wrapped in white tissue paper. A ring? A pin? perhaps a bracelet? Jewellery was something new for Mab, but she had lately discovered in herself a secret longing for something really nice of her own—a discriminating ambition born of being allowed occasionally to wearsomething of Virginia’s as a treat. If Jeff’s present was jewellery, how had he known that she was suddenly old enough to appreciate it? No one else knew. Jeff always knew things.
    “Happy birthday, Mab,” he said gently, and reached across the table to put the parcel in her hand.
    It was heavy, like the solid, satin-lined cases with spring-lids where Virginia’s best pieces lived. Her fingers shook a little as she undid it, her heart was beating. Yes—it was—Asprey’s name was on the outer box, there was always something a little extra about Asprey’s—a flat blue leather case—the lid flew up— a watch. They heard the incredulous childish gasp. A small bracelet watch, with gold hands, on a bed of white satin.
    “Oh, Jeff !” said Mab, and simply sat gazing at it, making no move to put it on.
    “Of course there may be some difficulty with the family about your accepting jewellery from strange men,” Jeff said with his straight-faced drollery.
    He knew very well that it was not a gift for a child, and he had consulted no one, except of course Sylvia, who had at once said, Well, why not, everybody wanted a watch. But not even Sylvia had been there when he chose it, on the overcast, pregnant afternoon a fortnight ago with the blackout rehearsal scheduled for midnight. London had turned that grim exercise into a weird sort of carnival, gathering in holiday crowds to jeer at premises which had overlooked precautions or neglected to conform —singing songs with rude improvised verses about the A.R.P., frolicking in Piccadilly Circus and heckling the earnest Air Raid Wardens to whom it was so serious a business. But underneath the apparent frivolity, the implications were still there. And everybody knew they could never hide the river from enemy bombers….
    Nobody said war nowadays. Emergency was the word.
In the event of an emergency
…. How long would Bond Street stand, Jeff wondered that afternoon with a long glance at Asprey’s glittering windows as he turned in at their door to buy Mab’s present. All that plate glass, he thought. Would London loot its shops when the glass broke under a raid? He would have wagered not. Meanwhile, Mab must have a watch, before it was too late. The first watch was always an event, and he wanted hers to come from him. Ticking out the days that were left of peace and safety in London. And he wanted no one else’s opinion or advice on his choice. This was between him and Mab—andAsprey’s. He took his time, and made his decision before he asked the price. There was only one that seemed to him just the thing, and this was it.
    “Well, really, Jeff, you did let go all holds,” Virginia murmured , but not with censure.
    “Asprey?” said Dinah, and nodded her approval. “My first watch came from there, too. I’ll never forget it. I was sixteen when Bracken bought it for me, and I didn’t dare to wear it, because of the family—so he carried it for me, for months. It went all through the Cuban campaign with him. I