“Yes; she says she’ll get me into her cabin somehow. It’s a single cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor. If you consent, she’ll go up now and get permission.”

“Consent?” thought Jolyon. “Rather late in the day to ask for that!” But again he checked himself.

“You’re too young, my dear; they won’t let you.”

“June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town. If they won’t let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on training there. Let me go, Dad!”

Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.

“I never stop anyone from doing anything,” he said.

Holly flung her arms round his neck.

“Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world.”

“That means the worst,” thought Jolyon. If he had ever doubted his creed of tolerance he did so then.