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Gowrie?”
    “On his best behaviour, I’ll bet!” someone else supplied for Alison when she did not answer immediately. “Alison isn’t Ronald Gowrie’s type.”
    Alison flushed. She could not bring herself to tell them that Ronald Gowrie had already asked her out.
    “ Anyone is Ronald Gowrie’s type—up to a point!” May Hardy protested from her chair beside one of the radiators. “He’ll love you and leave you, Lang, as the spirit moves him,” she warned as she saw Alison’s deepening flush. “I was six months on Air Ambulance, and I know!”
    Alison forced a smile.
    “All right,” she agreed. “I’m not falling for Captain Gowrie quite so hard as that, but thanks for the warning, all the same. I found him very nice.”
    “Everyone does until he unleashes the sarcasm on them. After that you begin to hate him—always providing that it’s not too late.” May examined her neatly-filed finger nails. “Yes, always providing it’s not too late,” she repeated heavily.
    “May fell for him like a ton of bricks,” Jenny Barr commented unkindly. “But she’s getting over it now.”
    “Any other respectable males at the airport?” May asked rather quickly.
    “There seemed to be a lot around,” Alison agreed, “but we were off almost at once.”
    “What about your patients?” Jenny asked. “We heard you touched down on Heimra on the way back.”
    “Yes. The message came out after us.” Alison felt almost reluctant to discuss her swift visit to that unexpected island. “We picked up a tonsillectomy.”
    “The Blair child,” May said airily. “Burnside has just been telling us all about him. He’s a spastic. It would appear that his mother had an accident just before he was born. Burnside fears he’s going to be difficult. Poor old Burnside! She hates scenes in her wards.”
    “She needn’t worry about Andrew Blair making a scene,” Alison said, tight-lipped. “He’s not the type to parade his emotions, even at five and a half.”
    Was that the way in which Andrew resembled Blair of Heimra, she wondered as she walked quickly along the corridor to the children’s ward an hour later—the only way? The memory of Andrew’s tight little mouth had haunted her all through her solitary meal, and Andrew’s large, serious eyes seemed to follow her everywhere.
    When she reached his bedside she knew that he had been waiting for her to come, although he made no outward sign. There were toys on the coverlet and gifts from the children in the other beds, but he took little interest in them. He seemed tired, and very soon he fell asleep. Alison sat on for a while before she unclasped his clinging fingers and moved away.
    “He’s never asked once for his mother,” Evelyne Burnside announced suspiciously as she followed Alison from the ward. “It seems a strange thing to me.”
    “Perhaps she’s ill,” Alison suggested briskly. “Perhaps he hasn’t been allowed to see her for some time.”
    “And perhaps she doesn’t want to see him,” Sister Burnside suggested dryly. “There are women like that, you know.”
    “All I know is that he has a very strong man behind him,” Alison said far too sharply as she left the ward.
    Yet how could she possibly know about Blair of Heimra—what manner of man he really was? She had no knowledge of him whatsoever, apart from the fact that an honest little Highland doctor had shaken him warmly by the hand, looking at him as if he counted it an honour to call him friend, and the added fact that a small, forlorn boy had clung to him with the utmost confidence as they had said goodbye.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    “WE’VE been sitting here talking for more than a couple of hours,” Ronald Gowrie pointed out, looking at his watch as he stubbed a final cigarette end into the ashtray in the centre of the table. “Too late for a show now, unless you don’t mind seeing only the second half? Personally,” he added, “half a film bores me to tears. I’m no good at