"Shortest damned commission in naval history, I'll be bound," Alan Lewrie commented to his dining companions at Gloster's Hotel and Chop-House in Piccadilly.

"Oh, God, is he on about that one again?" The Honorable Peter Rushton, one of his old friends from his brief terra at Harrow, almost gagged. "Give it a rest, will you, Alan? There's a good fellow. It is a wonder you don't still wear blue exclusively."

"Can't dine out on yer little bit o' fame forever, ye know, Alan," Clotworthy Chute, Rushton's constant companion, agreed round a bite of steak, and sloshed a sip of wine into his mouth to clear his palate to go further. "Bloody war's been over nigh on a year, don't ye know. You're home, well set up, got oceans o' chink to spend. Oceans o' mutton to bull. What man has need of anything more?"

"Well, it's not exactly oceans of guineas, Clotworthy," Alan pointed out. "More like a trickle of 'yellowboys' than a proper shower."

"But didn't Granny Lewrie just finish visiting?" Peter Rushton asked. "I'd have thought she'd have refilled your coffers to overflowing."

"So that's why you two bade me dine with you this evening," Alan said with a leery expression. From the first time he'd met them, neither Rushton nor Chute had had two pence to rub together. Chute's parents had gone smash and only provided him a miserly hundred pounds a year.