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"How long will you be away for this time, Tom?"

I grinned at her. "Three months," I said. "I'll be broke by that time, and home looking for a job."

She was knitting, and she went on for a minute. "I don't think so," she said quietly. "I don't think you'll go broke."

"Lots of people do go broke," I said, "and doing less daft things than this I'm playing at."

"I don't think you will," she repeated.

I grinned at her again. "Well, I've never starved in the winter yet."

"No, and I don't think you will."

She knitted on in silence for a time. "This place Bahrein where you're going to," she said. "What sort of place is it? How will you be living?"

"It's a fair-sized town," I said. "An Arab town, of course. There are some white people living there--the R.A.F., and the chaps in the Government. And then, inland there are sort of special towns like Awali run by the Bahrein Petroleum Company, where a lot of British and Canadian engineers live with their families."

"Will you live there?"

I shook my head. "I think there's an Arab hotel in the town. I'll probably be there, at first at any rate."