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"I think a silver foot would be horrid," said Jane. "You'd have to keep it clean and if there's anything I loathe it's the feeling of plate polish on my hands."

"There was Götz with the Iron Hand," said Robin, entering enthusiastically into the subject, "but I daresay it got rusty and anyway it wasn't a foot. And Nez-de-cuir; but that was his nose, so it's different. I never heard of a Leather Foot."

"No," said Jane, thoughtfully. "There was Leather Stocking, but he had a leg inside. And there are leather-jackets in the garden, beastly things. Oh, Robin, I do wish it hadn't happened."

"However much you wish it, I wish it more," said Robin. "Any news of Francis?"

Very few people asked Jane this question now. Partly they thought it might wake painful thoughts ("thinking of the old 'un," she said sardonically to herself), partly they had honestly forgotten about it, for the whirligig of time has so bruised and stunned us all that yesterday is swallowed in oblivion almost before to-day has dawned. Jane did not want inquiries, nor did she resent them. Her surface self responded pleasantly to the kindly and sympathetic and was unmoved by the forgetters. As for her inner self she did not quite know what it thought, and sometimes wondered if it knew itself. A sense of duty made her say to Frank from time to time that they would do this and that when father came home: and what this meant to him she did not know and had no means of knowing. And as he was very cheerful and ate enormously and slept like a dormouse, she saw no reason to delve deeper.