future time Derry would be enlightened concerning the Labuan trouble. Thorns understood that Maitland and his wife were on their way home, but he feared that he would miss Saunders, who was due back at Sandakan in a month. T. A. was a daddy at last. Good old T. A. We drank the health of T. A. and of Mrs. T. A. and of their offspring, but I never had more particular information about them, and I cannot tell you the sex of the child, because Derry wanted to know where Giles was now, and Thoms thought that he was still in Daru. But I remember that somebody else had been shifted to quite another place, the name of which I forget. It was, however, close to another place where death had recently robbed Derry and Thoms of a dear old boy they had known. Poor old chap! I wonder if he had been worrying too much over the Labuan trouble.
Our dinner at last came to an end. I had known from the first that, Thoms being just off his steamboat, the Empire could by no means be avoided. Nor was it. In the stalls Derry and Thoms continued cheerfully to converse about unknown people, by their initials and nicknames. I do not think they had any understanding of that which was happening on the stage. They never looked that way; they never looked my way, either. Yet I was close beside them. They amazed me.
