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The War-Workers

by E. M. Delafield · English · Gutenberg #37181 · 454,199 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The War-Workers

Author: E. M. Delafield


        
Release date: August 23, 2011 [eBook #37181]
                Most recently updated: April 4, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR-WORKERS ***

THE WAR-WORKERS

BY

E.M. DELAFIELD

Author of "Zella Sees Herself"

William Heinemann

London

1918




To

J. A. S.

A very small token of innumerable bonds of union




Author's Foreword

The "Midland Supply Depôt" of _The War-Workers_ has no
counterpart in real life, and the scenes and characters
described are also purely imaginary.

   E.M. Delafield




I


At the Hostel for Voluntary Workers, in Questerham, Miss Vivian,
Director of the Midland Supply Depôt, was under discussion that evening.

Half a dozen people, all of whom had been working for Miss Vivian ever
since ten o'clock that morning, as they had worked the day before and
would work again the next day, sat in the Hostel sitting-room and talked
about their work and about Miss Vivian.

No one ever talked anything but "shop," either in the office or at the
Hostel.

"Didn't you think Miss Vivian looked awfully tired today?"

"No wonder, after Monday night. You know the train wasn't in till past
ten o'clock. I think those troop-trains tire her more than anything."

"She doesn't have to cut cake and bread-and-butter and sandwiches for
two hours before the train gets in, though. I've got the usual blister
today," said an anaemic-looking girl of twenty, examining her
forefinger.

There was a low scoffing laugh from her neighbour.

"Miss Vivian cutting bread-and-butter! She does quite enough without
that, Henderson. She had the D.G.V.O. in there yesterday afternoon for
ages. I thought he was _never_ going. I stood outside her door for half
an hour, I should think, absolutely hung up over the whole of my work,
and I knew she was fearfully busy herself."

"It's all very well for you, Miss Delmege—you're her secretary and work
in her room, but _we_ can't get at her unless we're sent for. I simply
didn't know what to do about those surgical supplies for the Town
Hospital this morning, and Miss Vivian never sent for me till past
eleven o'clock. It simply wasted half my morning."

"She didn't have a minute; the telephone was going the whole time," said
Miss Delmege quickly. "But yesterday, you know, when the D.G.V.O.
wouldn't go, I thought she was going to be late at the station for that
troop-train, and things were fairly desperate, so what d'you suppose I
did?"

"Dashed into her room and got your head snapped off?" some one suggested
languidly. "I shall never forget one day last week when _I_ didn't know
which way to _turn_, we were so busy, and I went in without being sent
for, and Miss Vivian--"

"Oh yes, I remember," said Miss Delmege rapidly. She was a tall girl
with eyeglasses and a superior manner. She did not remember Miss Marsh's
irruption into her chief's sanctum with any particular clearness, but
she was anxious to finish her own anecdote. "But as _I_ was telling
you," she hurried on, affecting to be unaware that Miss Marsh and her
neighbour were exchanging glances, "when I saw that it was getting later
every minute, and the D.G.V.O. seemed rooted to the spot, I simply went
straight downstairs and rang up Miss Vivian on the telephone. Miss Cox
was on telephone duty, and she was absolutely horrified. She said, 'You
_don't_ mean to say you're going to ring up Miss Vivian,' she said; and
I said, 'Yes, I am. Yes, I am,' I said, and I did it. Miss Cox simply
couldn't get over it."

Miss Delmege paused to laugh in solitary enjoyment of her story.

"'Who's there?' Miss Vivian said—you know what she's like when she's in
a hurry. 'It's Miss Delmege,' I said. 'I thought you might want to know
that the train will be in at eight o'clock, Miss Vivian, and it's
half-past seven now.' She just said 'Thank you,' and rang off; but she
must have told the D.G.V.O., because he came downstairs two minutes
later. And she simply flung on her hat and dashed down into the car and
to the station."

"And, after all, the train wasn't in till past ten, so she might just as
well have stayed to put her hat on straight," said Miss Henderson
boldly. She had a reputation for being "downright" of which she was
aware, and which she strenuously sought to maintain by occasionally
making small oblique sallies at Miss Vivian's expense.

"I must say it was most awfully crooked. I noticed it myself," said a
pretty little giggling girl whom the others always called Tony, because
her surname was Anthony. "How killing," I thought; "there's Miss Vivian
with her hat on quite crooked."

"Yes, wasn't it killing?"

"Simply killing. I thought the minute I saw her: How killing to see Miss
Vivian with her hat on like that!"

"She looked perfectly killing hurrying down the platform," remarked Miss
Marsh, with an air of originality. "She was carrying cigarettes for the
men, and her hat got crookeder every minute. I was pining to tell her."

"Go on, Marshy! She'd have had your head off. Fancy Marsh stopping Miss
Vivian in the middle of a troop-train to say her hat was on crooked!"

Every one laughed.

"I should think she'd be shot at dawn," suggested Tony. "That's the
official penalty for making personal remarks to your C.O., I believe."

"You know," said Miss Delmege, in the tones whose refinement was always
calculated to show up the unmodulated accents of her neighbours, "one
day I absolutely did tell Miss Vivian when her hat was crooked. I said
right out: 'Do excuse me, Miss Vivian, but your hat isn't quite
straight.' She didn't mind a _bit_."

"I suppose she knows she always looks nice anyway," said Tony easily.

"I mean she didn't mind me telling her," explained Miss Delmege. "She's
most awfully human, you know, really. That's what I like about Miss
Vivian. She's so frightfully human."

"Yes, she _is_ human," Miss Marsh agreed. "Awfully human."

Miss Delmege raised her eyebrows.

"Of course," she said, with quiet emphasis, "working in her room, as I
do, I suppose I see quite another side of her--the _human_ side, you
know."

There was a silence. Nobody felt disposed to encourage Miss Vivian's
secretary in her all-too-frequent recapitulations of the privileges
which she enjoyed.

Presently another worker came in, looking inky and harassed.

"You're late tonight, Mrs. Potter, aren't you?" Tony asked her.

"Oh yes. It's those awful Belgians, you know. Wherever I put them,
they're miserable, and write and ask to be taken away. There's a family
now that I settled simply beautifully at Little Quester village only a
month ago, and this afternoon the mother came in to say the air doesn't
suit them at all--she has a consumptive son or something--and could they
be moved to the seaside at once. So I told Miss Vivian, and she said I
was to get them moved directly. At once--today, you know. Of course, it
was perfectly absurd--they couldn't even get packed up--and I told her
so; but she said, 'Oh, settle it all by telephone'--you know her way.
'But, Miss Vivian,' I said, 'really I don't see how it can be managed.
I've got a most fearful amount of work,' I said. 'Well,' she said, 'if
you can't get through it, Mrs. Potter, I must simply put some one else
at the head of the department who _can_.' It's too bad, you know."

Mrs. Potter sank into the only unoccupied wicker arm-chair in the room,
looking very much jaded indeed.

Tony said sympathetically:

"What a shame! Miss Vivian doesn't realize what an awful lot you do, I'm
perfectly certain."

"Well, considering that every letter and every bit of work in the whole
office passes through Miss Vivian's hands, that's absurd," said Miss
Delmege sharply. "She knows exactly what each department has to do, but,
of course, she's such a quick worker herself that she can't understand
any one not being able to get through the same amount."

Mrs. Potter looked far from enchanted with the proffered explanation.

"It isn't that I can't get through the work," she said resentfully. "Of
course I can get through the regular work all right. But I must say, I
do think she's inconsiderate over these lightning touches of hers. What
on earth was the sense of making those people move tonight, I should
like to know?"

"Miss Vivian never will let the work get behindhand if she can help it,"
exclaimed Miss Marsh; and Miss Henderson at the same instant said,
rather defiantly:

"Well, of course, Miss Vivian always puts the work before everything.
She never spares herself, so I don't quite see why she should spare any
of us."

"The fact is," said the small, cool voice of Miss Delmege, as usual
contriving to filter through every other less refined sound, "she is
extraordinarily tender-hearted. She can't bear to think any one is
suffering when she could possibly help them; she'll simply go miles out
of her way to do something for a wounded soldier or a Belgian refugee. I
see that in her correspondence so much. You know--the letters she writes
about quite little things, because some one or other wants her to.
She'll take _endless_ trouble."

"I know she's wonderful," said Mrs. Potter, looking remorseful.

She was a middle-aged woman with light wispy hair, always untidy, and
wearing a permanent expression of fluster. She had only been at the
Hostel a few weeks. "Isn't it nearly supper-time?" yawned Tony. "I want
to go to bed."

"Tired, Tony?"

"Yes, awfully. I was on telephone duty last night, stamping the letters,
and I didn't get off till nearly eleven."

"There must have been a lot of letters," said Miss Delmege, with the
hint of scepticism which she always managed to infuse into her tones
when speaking of other people's work.

"About a hundred and thirty odd, but they didn't come down till very
late. Miss Vivian was still signing the last lot at ten o'clock."

"She must have been very late getting out to Plessing. It's all very
well for us," remarked Miss Marsh instructively; "_we_ finish work at
about six or seven o'clock, and then just come across the road, and here
we are. But poor Miss Vivian has about an hour's drive before she gets
home at all."

"She's always at the office by ten every morning, too."

"She ought to have some one to help her," sighed Miss Delmege. "Of
course, I'd do anything to take some of the work off her hands, and I
think she knows it. I think she knows I'd do simply anything for her;
but she really wants some one who could take her place when she has to
be away, and sign the letters for her, and see people. That's what she
really needs."

"Thank goodness, there's the supper bell," said Tony.

They trooped downstairs.

The house was the ordinary high, narrow building of a provincial town,
and held an insufficiency of rooms for the number of people domiciled
there. The girls slept three or four in a room; the Superintendent had a
tiny bedroom, and a slightly larger sitting-room adjoining the large
room on the ground floor where they congregated in the evenings and on
Sundays, and the dining-room was in the basement.

Gas flared on to the white shining American-cloth covering the long
table and on the wooden kitchen chairs. The windows were set high up in
the walls, and gave a view of area railings and, at certain angles, of a
piece of pavement.

One or two coloured lithographs hung on the walls.

There was a hideous sound of scraping as chairs were drawn back or
pulled forwards over the uncarpeted boards.

"Sit next me, duck."

"All right. Come on, Tony; get the other side of Sprouts."

Miss Delmege, aloof and superior, received no invitation to place
herself beside any one, and settled herself with genteel swishings of
her skirt at the foot of the table.

The Superintendent sat at the head.

She was a small, delicate-looking Irish woman with an enthusiastic
manner, who had married late in life, and been left a widow within two
years of her marriage. She worked very hard, and it was her constant
endeavour to maintain an atmosphere of perpetual brightness in the
Hostel.

It was with this end in view that she invariably changed her blouse for
a slightly cleaner one at suppertime, although all the girls were in
uniform, and many of them still wearing a hat. But little Mrs. Bullivant
always appeared in a rather pallid example of the dyer or cleaner's art,
and said hopefully: "One of these days I must make a rule that all you
girls dress for dinner. We shall find ourselves growing dreadfully
uncivilized, I'm afraid, if we go on like this."

The Hostel liked Mrs. Bullivant, although she was a bad manager and
could never keep a servant for long. She made no secret of the fact that
she could not afford to be a voluntary worker.

Every Hostel in the district, and they were numerous owing to the
recently-opened Munitions Factory near Questerham, had rapidly become,
as it were, fish for Miss Vivian's net. Each and all were under her
control, and the rivalry between the Questerham Hostel "for Miss
Vivian's _own_ workers" and those reserved for the munition-makers was
an embittered one.

"What has every one been doing to-day?" Mrs. Bullivant asked cheerfully.

The inquiry was readily responded to.

The angle of Miss Vivian's hat, when she had gone down to meet the
troop-train, was again the subject of comment, and Miss Delmege was
again reminded of the story, which she told with quiet and undiminished
enjoyment, of her erstwhile daring in approaching Miss Vivian upon the
subject.

"Did you really?" said Mrs. Bullivant admiringly. "Of course, it's
different for you, Miss Delmege, working in her room all day. You see so
much more of her than any one else does."

Every one except the complacent Miss Delmege looked reproachfully at the
little Superintendent. She was incapable of snubbing any one, but the
Hostel thought her encouragement of Miss Delmege unnecessary in the
extreme.

Mrs. Bullivant changed the conversation rather hurriedly.

"Who is on telephone duty tonight?" she inquired.

"I am, worse luck."

"Miss Plumtree? And your head is bad again, isn't it, dear?"

"Yes," said Miss Plumtree wearily.

She was a fair, round-faced girl of five or six and twenty who suffered
from frequent sick headaches. She worked for longer hours than any one
else, and had a reputation for "making muddles." It was popularly
supposed that Miss Vivian "had a down on her," but the Hostel liked Miss
Plumtree, and affectionately called her Greengage and Gooseberry-bush.

"Greengage got another headache?" Miss Marsh asked concernedly. "I can
take your duty to-night, dear, quite well."

"Thanks awfully, Marsh; it's sweet of you, but I haven't got leave to
change. You know last time, when Tony took duty for me, Miss Vivian
asked why I wasn't there."

"I can say you're sick."

"Oh, I'm sure she wouldn't like it," said Miss Plumtree, looking nervous
and undecided.

"I think you ought to be in bed, I must say," said Mrs. Bullivant
uncertainly.

"She certainly doesn't look fit to sit at that awful telephone for two
and a half hours; and there are heaps of letters to-night. I can answer
for the Hospital Department, anyway," sighed Miss Henderson. "Marshy,
you look pretty tired yourself. I can quite well take the telephone if
you like. I'm not doing anything."

"I thought you were going to the cinema."

"I don't care. I can do that another night. I'm not a bit keen on
pictures, really, and it's raining hard."

"Thanks most awfully, both of you," repeated Miss Plumtree, "but I
really think I'd better go myself. You know what Miss Vivian is, if she
thinks one's shirking, and I'm not at all in her good books at the
moment, either. There was the most ghastly muddle about those returns
last month, and I sent in the averages as wrong as they could be."

"That's nothing to do with your being unfit for telephone duty tonight,"
said Miss Delmege, with acid sweetness. "I think I can answer for it
that Miss Vivian would be the first person to say you ought to let some
one else take duty for you. I'd do it myself, only I really must get
some letters written tonight. One never has a minute here. But I think I
can answer for Miss Vivian."

In spite of the number of times that Miss Delmege expressed herself as
ready to answer for Miss Vivian, no one had ever yet failed to be moved
to exasperation by her pretensions.

"On the whole, Plumtree, you may be right not to risk it," said Miss
Henderson freezingly, as she rose from the table.

"I'll manage all right," declared Miss Plumtree; but her round
apple-blossom face was drawn with pain, and she stumbled up the dark
stairs.

In the hall there was a hurried consultation between Miss Marsh and Miss
Anthony.

"I say, Tony, old Gooseberry-bush isn't fit to stir. She ought to be
tucked up in her bye-byes this minute. Shall I risk it, and go instead
of her, leave or no leave?"

"I should think so, yes. What have things been like today?"

"Oh, fairly serene. I didn't see Miss Vivian this morning, myself, but
nobody seems to have had their heads snapped off. There wasn't a fearful
lot of work for her, either, because Miss Delmege came in quite early."

"Delmege makes me sick, the way she goes on! As though nobody else knew
anything about Miss Vivian, and she was a sort of connecting-link
between her and us. Didn't you hear her tonight? 'I think I can answer
for Miss Vivian,'" mimicked Tony in an exaggerated falsetto. "I should
jolly well like Miss Vivian to hear her one of these days. She'd
appreciate being answered for like that by her secretary--I don't
think!"

"I say, Marshy, can you keep a secret?"

"Rather!"

"Well, swear not to tell, and, mind, I'm speaking absolutely
unofficially. I've no business to know it officially at all, because I
only saw it on a telegram I sent for the Billeting Department. Miss
Delmege is going to get her nose put out of joint with Miss V. Another
secretary is coming."

"She's not! D'you mean Delmege has got the sack?"

"Oh, Lord, no! It's only somebody coming to help her, because there is
so much work for one secretary. She's coming from Wales, and her name is
Jones."

"I seem to have heard that name before."

They both giggled explosively; then made a simultaneous dash at the
hall-door as Miss Plumtree, in hat and coat, came slowly out of the
sitting-room.

"No, you don't, Plumtree! You're going straight up to bed, and I'll tell
Miss Vivian you were ill. It'll be all right."

"You are a brick, Marsh."

"Nonsense! You'll do as much for me some day. Goodnight, dear."

Miss Marsh hurried out, and Miss Plumtree thankfully took the felt
uniform hat off her aching head.

"Get into bed," directed Tony, "and take an aspirin."

"Haven't got one left, worse luck."

"I'll see if any one else has any. I believe Mrs. Potter has."

Tony hurried into the sitting-room. Mrs. Potter had no aspirin, but she
hoisted herself out of her arm-chair and said she would go round to the
chemist and get some.

She went out into the rain.

Tony borrowed a rubber hot-water bottle from Miss Henderson, and a
kettle from somebody else, and went upstairs to boil some water,
forgetting that she was tired and had meant to go to bed after supper.

Presently little Mrs. Bullivant came upstairs with a cup of tea and the
aspirin, both of which she administered to the patient.

"You'll go to sleep after that, I expect," she said consolingly.

"I'll tell the girls to get into bed quietly," Tony whispered.

Miss Plumtree shared a room with Miss Delmege and Miss Henderson.

"I never do make any noise in the room that I am aware of," said Miss
Delmege coldly; but she and her room-mate both crept upstairs soon after
nine o'clock, lest their entrance later should awaken the sufferer, and
they undressed with the gas turned as low as it would go, and in
silence.

Padding softly in dressing-slippers to the bathroom later on, for the
lukewarm water which was all that they could hope to get until the
solitary gas-ring should have served the turn of numerous waiting
kettles, they heard Miss Marsh returning from telephone duty, bolting
the hall-door, and putting up the chain.

"You're back early," whispered Miss Henderson, coming halfway downstairs
in her pink flannelette dressing-gown, her scanty fair hair screwed back
into a tight plait.

"Wasn't much doing. Miss Vivian got off at half-past nine. Jolly good
thing, too; she's been late every night this week."

"Was it all right about your taking duty?"

"Ab-solutely. Said she was glad Miss Plumtree had gone to bed, and asked
if she had anything to take for her head."

"How awfully decent of her!"

"Wasn't it? It'll buck old Greengage up, too. She always thinks Miss
Vivian has a down on her."

Miss Delmege leant over the banisters and said in a subdued but very
complacent undertone:

"I thought Miss Vivian would be all right. I thought I could safely
answer for her."




II


Plessing was also speaking of Miss Vivian that evening.

"Where is this to end, Miss Bruce? I ask you, where is it to end?"
demanded Miss Vivian's mother.

Miss Bruce knew quite well that Lady Vivian was not asking her at all,
in the sense of expecting to receive from her any suggestion of a term
to that which in fact appeared to be interminable, so she only made a
clicking sound of sympathy with her tongue and went on rapidly stamping
postcards.

"I am not unpatriotic, though I do dislike Flag-days, and I was the first
person to say that Char must go and do work somewhere--nurse in a
hospital if she liked, or do censor's work at the War Office. Sir Piers
said 'No' at first--you know he's old-fashioned in many ways--and then
he said Char wasn't strong enough, and to a certain extent I agreed with
him. But I put aside all that and absolutely encouraged her, as you
know, to organize this Supply Depôt. But I must say, Miss Bruce, that I
never expected the thing to grow to these dimensions. Of course, it may
be a very splendid work--in fact, I'm sure it is, and every one says how
proud I must be of such a wonderful daughter—but _is_ it all absolutely
necessary?"

"Oh, Lady Vivian," said the secretary reproachfully. "Why, the very War
Office itself knows the value of dear Charmian's work. They are always
asking her to take on fresh branches."

"That's just what I am complaining of. Why should the Midland Supply
Depôt do all these odd jobs? Hospital supplies are all very well, but
when it comes to meeting all the troop-trains and supplying all the
bandages, and being central Depôt for sphagnum moss, and all the rest of
it--all I can say is, that it's beyond a joke."

Miss Bruce took instant advantage of her employer's infelicitous final
_cliché_ to remark austerely:

"Certainly one would never dream of looking upon it as a _joke_, Lady
Vivian. I quite feel with you about the working so fearfully hard, and
keeping these strange, irregular hours, but I'm convinced that it's
perfectly unavoidable--perfectly unavoidable. Charmian owns herself that
no one can possibly take her place at the Depôt, even for a day."

This striking testimony to the irreplacableness of her daughter appeared
to leave Lady Vivian cold.

"I dare say," she said curtly. "Of course, she's got a gift for
organization, and all she's done is perfectly marvellous, but I must say
I wish she'd taken up nursing or something reasonable, like anybody
else, when she could have had proper holidays and kept regular hours."

Miss Bruce gave the secretarial equivalent for laughing the suggestion
to scorn.

"As though nursing wasn't something that _anyone_ could do! Why, any
ordinary girl can work in a hospital. But I should like to know what
other woman could do Charmian's work. Why, if she left, the whole
organization would break down in a week."

"Well," said the goaded Lady Vivian, "the war wouldn't go on any the
longer if it did, I don't suppose--any more than it's going to end
twenty-four hours sooner because Char has dinner at eleven o'clock every
night and spends five pounds a day on postage stamps."

Miss Bruce looked hurt, as she went on applying halfpenny stamps to the
postcards that formed an increasing mountain on the writing-table in
front of her.

"I suppose you're working for her now?"

"I only wish I could do more," said the secretary fervently. "She gives
me these odd jobs because I'm always imploring her to let me do some of
the mechanical work that any one can manage, and spare her for other
things. But, of course, no one can really do anything much to help her."

"I'm sorry to hear it, since she has a staff of thirty or forty people
there. Pray, are they all being paid out of Red Cross funds for doing
nothing at all?" inquired Lady Vivian satirically.

"Oh, of course they all do their bit. Routine work, as Charmian calls
it. But she has to superintend everything--hold the whole thing
together. She looks through every letter that leaves that office, and
knows the workings of every single department, and they come and ask her
about every little thing."

"Yes, they do. She enjoys that."

Lady Vivian's tone held nothing more than reflectiveness, but the little
secretary reddened unbecomingly, and said in a strongly protesting
voice:

"Of course, it's a very big responsibility, and she knows that it all
rests on her."

"Well, well," said Lady Vivian soothingly. "No one is ever a prophet in
his own country, and I suppose Char is no exception. Anyhow, she has a
most devoted champion in you, Miss Bruce."

"It has nothing to do with any--any personal liking, Lady Vivian, I
assure you," said the secretary, her voice trembling and her colour
rising yet more. "I don't say it because it's her, but quite
dispassionately. I hope that even if I knew nothing of Charmian's own
personal attractiveness and--and kindness, I should still be able to see
how wonderful her devotion and self-sacrifice are, and admire her
extraordinary capacity for work. Speaking quite impersonally, you know."

Anything less impersonal than her secretary's impassioned utterances, it
seemed to Lady Vivian, would have been hard to find, and she shrugged
her shoulders very slightly.

"Well, Char certainly needs a champion, for she's making herself very
unpopular in the county. All these people who ran their small
organizations and war charities quite comfortably for the first six or
eight months of the war naturally don't like the way everything has been
snatched away and affiliated to this Central Depôt--"

"Official co-ordination is absolutely--"

"Yes, yes, I know; that's Char's _cri de bataille_. But there are ways
and ways of doing things, and I must say that some of the things she's
said and written, to perfectly well-meaning people who've been doing
their best and giving endless time and trouble to the work, seem to me
tactless to a degree."

"She says herself that anyone in her position is bound to give offence
sometimes."

"Position fiddlesticks!" said Miss Vivian's parent briskly. "Why can't
she behave like anybody else? She might be the War Office and the
Admiralty rolled into one, to hear her talk sometimes. Of course, people
who've known her ever since she was a little scrap in short petticoats
aren't going to stand it. Why, she won't even be thirty till next
month!--though, I must say, she might be sixty from the way she talks.
But then she always was like that, from the time she was five years old.
It worried poor Sir Piers dreadfully when he wanted to show her how to
manage her hoop, and she insisted on arguing with him about the law of
gravitation instead. I suppose I ought to have smacked her then."

Miss Bruce choked, but any protest at the thought of the obviously
regretted opportunity lost by Lady Vivian for the perpetration of the
suggested outrage remained unuttered.

The sharp sound of the telephone-bell cut across the air.

Miss Bruce attempted to rise, but was hampered by the paraphernalia of
her clerical work, and Lady Vivian said:

"Sir Piers will answer it. He is in the hall, and you know he likes
telephoning, because then he can think he isn't really getting as deaf
as he sometimes thinks he is."

Miss Bruce, respecting this rather complicated reason, sat down again,
and Lady Vivian remarked dispassionately:

"Of course it's Char, probably to say she can't come back to dinner. You
know, I specially asked her to get back early tonight because John
Trevellyan is dining with us. There! what did I tell you?"

They listened to the one-sided conversation.

"Sir Piers Vivian speaking. What's that? Oh, you'll put me through to
Miss Vivian. Very well; I'll hold on. That you, my dear? Your mother and
I are most anxious you should be back for dinner--Trevellyan is
coming.... We'll put off dinner for half an hour if that would help
you.... But, my dear, he'll be very much disappointed not to see you,
and it really seems a pity, when the poor chap is just back ... he'll be
so disappointed.... Yes, yes, I see. I'm sure it's very good of you, but
couldn't they manage without you just for once?... Very well, my dear,
I'll tell him.... It's really very good of you, my poor dear child...."

Lady Vivian stamped her foot noiselessly as her husband's voice reached
her; but when Sir Piers had put back the receiver and come slowly into
the room, she greeted him with a smile.

"Was that Char? To say she couldn't be back in time for dinner tonight,
I suppose?"

Quick-tempered, sharp-tongued woman as she was, Joanna Vivian's voice
was always gentle in speaking to her white-haired husband, twenty years
her senior.

"The poor child seems to think she can't be spared. Very good of her,
but isn't she overdoing it just a little--eh, Joanna? Aren't they
working her rather too hard?"

"It's mostly her own doing, Piers. She's head of this show, you know. I
suppose that's why she thinks she can't leave it."

"The whole thing would go to pieces without her," thrust in the
secretary, in the sudden falsetto with which she always impressed upon
Sir Piers her recollection of his increasing deafness. "She supervises
the whole organization, and if she's away there isn't any one to take
her place."

"But they don't want to work after six o'clock," said the old man,
looking puzzled. "Ten to six--that's office hours. She oughtn't to want
to be there after the place is shut up."

"Oh, there's no 'close time' for the Midland Supply Depôt," said Miss
Bruce, looking superior. "They may have orders to meet a train at any
hour of the day or night, and the telephone often goes on ringing till
eleven or twelve o'clock, I believe. And Charmian _never_ leaves till
everyone else has finished work."

Sir Piers looked bewildered, and his wife said quietly:

"I'm thinking of suggesting to Char that she should sleep at the Hostel
they opened last year, instead of coming back here at impossible hours
every night. It really is very hard on the servants, and, besides, I
don't think we shall have enough petrol this winter for it to be
possible. She could always come home for week-ends, and on the whole it
would be less tiring for her to be altogether in Questerham during the
week."

"But is it necessary?" inquired Sir Piers piteously.

His wife shrugged her shoulders.

"If she'd been a boy she would be in the trenches now. I suppose we must
let her do what she can, even though she's a girl. Other parents have to
make greater sacrifices than ours, Piers."

"Yes, yes, to be sure," he assented. "And it's very good of the dear
child to give up all her time as she does. But I'm sorry she can't be
back for dinner tonight, Joanna--very sorry. Poor Trevellyan will be
disappointed."

"Yes," said Lady Vivian, and refrained from adding, "I hope he will be."

She had once hoped that Char and John Trevellyan might marry; but Char's
easy contempt for her cousin's Philistinism was only equalled by his
unconcealed regret that so much prettiness should be allied to such
alarming quick-wittedness.

"Miss Bruce," she said, turning to her secretary, "I hope you will dine
with us tonight. Captain Trevellyan is bringing over a brother-officer
and his wife, and we shall be an odd number, since there is no hope of
Char."

"What's that, my dear?" said Sir Piers. "I hadn't heard that. Who is
Trevellyan bringing with him?"

"Major Willoughby and his wife. She used to be Lesbia Carroll, and I
knew her years ago--before she married. I shall be rather curious to see
her again."

"Are they motoring?"

"Yes, in Johnnie's new car."

The dressing-gong reverberated through the hall.

"They will very likely be late," remarked Lady Vivian, "but I must go
and dress at once."

She went across the long room, a tall, upright woman with a beautiful
figure, obviously better-looking at fifty-two than she could ever have
been as a girl. Her hair was thick and dark, with more than a sprinkling
of white, and two deep vertical lines ran from the corners of her
nostrils to her rather square chin. But her blue eyes were brilliant,
and deeply set under a forehead that was singularly unlined.

As Joanna Trevellyan, ungainly and devoid of beauty, she had been far
too outspoken to conceal her native cleverness, and had never known
popularity. As the wife of Sir Piers Vivian, the only man who had ever
wished to marry her, and mistress of Plessing, her wit and shrewdness
became her, and as the years went on she was even accounted
good-looking.

Miss Bruce, returning to her postcards after a hurried toilet, thought
that Lady Vivian looked very handsome as she came down in her black-lace
evening-dress with a high amethyst comb in her hair.

"Have the evening papers come?" was her first inquiry.

"I think Sir Piers had them taken upstairs."

Lady Vivian frowned quickly.

"How I wish he wouldn't do that! The casualty lists depress him so
dreadfully. We must try and keep off the subject of the war at dinner,
Miss Bruce, or he won't sleep all night."

Miss Bruce said nothing, but she pursed up her lips in a manner which
meant that a possibly wakeful night for Sir Piers Vivian ought not to be
weighed in the balance against the universal tendency to discuss the
war. That the subject was never willingly embarked upon at Plessing,
except by Char Vivian, seemed to her a confession of weakness.

Lady Vivian was perfectly aware of her secretary's point of view, and
profoundly indifferent to it. She even took a rather malicious pleasure
in saying lightly and yet very decidedly:

"John is safe enough, but I don't know what Lesbia Willoughby may choose
to talk about. As a girl she had the voice of a pea-hen, and never
stopped chattering. So, if you can, please head her off war-talk at
dinner."

Her employer's trenchant simile as to Mrs. Willoughby's vocal powers
could not but recur to Miss Bruce with a sense of its extreme
appositeness when the guests entered.

Mrs. Willoughby billowed into the room. There was really no other word
to describe that rapid, undulating, and yet buoyant advance. Tall as
Lady Vivian was, and by no means slightly built, she seemed to Miss
Bruce to be at once physically overpowered and almost eclipsed in the
strident and voluminous greeting of her old acquaintance.

"My _dear_ Joanna! After _all_ these years ... how too, too delightful
to see you so absolutely and utterly unchanged! _Dear_ old days! And now
we meet in the midst of all these horrors!"

The exaggeration of the look she cast round her seemed to include the
drawing-room and its occupants alike in the pleasing category.

"I'm sorry you don't like my Louis XV.," said Lady Vivian flippantly,
and turned to greet the rest of the party.

Her cousin John, who looked, even in khaki, a great deal less than his
thirty years, smiled at her with steady blue eyes that bore a great
resemblance to her own, and wrung her hand, saying, "This is very jolly,
Cousin Joanna," in a pleasant, rather serious voice.

"And here," said Lesbia Willoughby piercingly--"here is my Lewis."

Her Lewis advanced, looking not unnaturally sheepish, and Trevellyan
said conscientiously:

"May I introduce Major Willoughby to you? My cousin, Lady Vivian."

"You _never_ told me, Joanna, that this dear thing was a cousin of
yours," shrieked Lesbia reproachfully. "I think it quite disgustingly
mean of you, considering that we were girls together."

"In the days when we were girls together," said Lady Vivian ruthlessly,
"he wasn't born or thought of. Have they announced dinner, Miss Bruce?"

"This moment."

"Then, do let's go in at once. You must all be very hungry after such a
drive."

"I _never_ eat nowadays--simply never," proclaimed Mrs. Willoughby as
she crossed the hall on Sir Piers's arm. "I think it most unpatriotic.
We're all going to be starving quite soon, and the poor are living on
simply nothing a day as it is. And one can't _bear_ to touch food while
our poor dear boys in the trenches and in Germany are literally
starving."

Mrs. Willoughby's voice was of a very piercing quality, and she
emphasized her words by rolling round a pair of enormous and
over-prominent light grey eyes as she spoke. Seated at the dinner-table,
she contrived to present an appearance that almost amounted to
impropriety, by merely putting a large bare elbow on the table and
flinging back an elaborately dressed head set on a short neck and
opulent shoulders, thickly dredged with heavily scented powder. Miss
Bruce, on the opposite side of the table, eyed her with distrustful
disapproval. It did not appear to her likely that she would be able to
carry out Lady Vivian's injunction that war-talk was to be avoided.

"Isn't Char at home?" Trevellyan inquired of his hostess.

"She's at Questerham, and the car has gone in for her, but she
telephoned to say that she couldn't get back till late. It's this Supply
Depôt of hers; she's giving every minute of the day and night to it,"
said Lady Vivian, characteristically allowing no tinge of disapproval or
disappointment to colour her voice.

"Is that your delightful girl?" inquired Lesbia across the table, and
pronouncing the word as though it rhymed with "curl." "Isn't it too
wonderful to see all these young things devoting themselves? As for me,
I'm literally run off my feet in town. I'm having a holiday here--just
to see something of Lewis, who's stationed in these parts indefinitely,
poor dear lamb--because my doctor said I was _killing_ myself--literally
killing myself."

"Really?" said Lady Vivian placidly. "I hope you're going to be here for
some time. Are you staying--"

"Only till I'm fit to move. That _moment_," said Lesbia impressively,
"that very moment, I must simply dash back to London. My dear, I can't
tell you what it's like. I never have an instant to call my own--have I,
Lewis?"

"Rather not," said Lewis hastily.

He was a small, brown-faced man, who had won his D.S.O. in South Africa,
and whom no doctor could now be induced to pass for service abroad.

"Perhaps some charitable organization takes up your time," suggested Sir
Piers to Mrs. Willoughby. His deafness seldom permitted him to follow
more than the drift of general conversation. "Now, Charmian, our
daughter, has taken up a most creditable piece of work--most
creditable--although, perhaps, she is a little inclined to overdo things
just at present."

"No one can _possibly_ overdo war-work," Mrs. Willoughby told him
trenchantly. "Nothing that we women of England can do could ever be
enough for the brave fathers, and husbands, and brothers, and
sweethearts, who are risking their lives for us out there. Think of what
the trenches are--just _hell_, as a boy said to me the other day--hell
let loose!"

Sir Piers looked very much distressed, and his white head began to
shake. He had only heard part of Lesbia's discourse. Trevellyan's
boyishly fair face flushed scarlet. He had fought in Belgium, and in
Flanders, until a bullet lodged in his knee, and now his next Medical
Board might send him to France to rejoin his regiment. But it would have
occurred to no one to suppose that the poignant description quoted by
Mrs. Willoughby had ever emanated from Trevellyan.

From the head of the table Joanna Vivian said smoothly:

"You've made us all very curious as to your work, Lesbia. Do tell us
what you do."

Mrs. Willoughby gave her high, strident laugh.

"Everything," was her modest claim. "Absolutely everything, my dear.
Packing for prisoners three mornings a week, canteen work twice, and
every Flag-day going. I can't tell you the _hours_ I've stood outside
Claridge's carrying a tray and seeing insolent wretches walk past me
without buying. I've been _so_ exhausted by the end of the day I've had
to have an hour's massage before I could _drag_ myself out to patronize
some Red Cross entertainment. But, of course, my real work is the
Colonial officers. Dear, sweet things! I take them _all_ over London!"

"By Jove, though, do you really!" said Trevellyan admiringly.

Only a certain naïve quality of sincerity in his simplicities, Joanna
reflected, saved Johnnie from appearing absolutely stupid. But, her
husband excepted, she was secretly fonder and more proud of Johnnie than
of any one in the world, and she did not make the mistake of supposing
that his easy chivalry denoted any admiration for the screeching
monologue of which Lesbia was delivering herself.

"I make a specialty of South Africans," she proclaimed to the table.
"They're so delightfully rural--even more so than the dear Australians,
though I have a passion for Anzacs. But I take _some_ of them
_some_where every day--just show them London, you know. Not one of them
knows a soul in England, and of course London is a perfect marvel to
them. I simply live in taxis, rushing the dear things round."

"Ah, we had a couple of Canadians here last week--very fine fellows,"
said Sir Piers. "Been in hospital in Questerham, both of them, and Char
thought they'd enjoy a day out in the country. She manages everything,
you know--even the hospitals. The doctors all come to her for
everything, I believe. She tells me that all the hospitals round about
are affiliated to her office."

"Ranks as a sort of Universal Provider--what?" said Trevellyan.

"Yes; isn't it wonderful?" said Miss Bruce eagerly; and availed herself
to the full of the double opportunity for obeying, even at the eleventh
hour, Lady Vivian's injunctions as to the trend of the conversation, and
at the same time making the utmost of her favourite topic, Char Vivian's
work at the Midland Supply Depôt.

For the rest of dinner, in spite of several strenuous efforts from
Lesbia Willoughby, nothing else was discussed.




III


Ten o'clock in the morning, and little Miss Anthony flew up Questerham
High Street on her bicycle, conscious that her hurried choice of a
winter hat had not only been highly unsatisfactory, owing to the extreme
haste with which she had conducted it, but was also about to make her
late in arriving at the office. She threw an anxious glance at the
Post-Office clock, and redoubled her speed at the sight of it, though no
amount of haste would get her to the Midland Supply Depôt Headquarters
under another seven minutes.

But she sped gallantly across the tram-lines and in and out of the
slow-moving stream of market-carts, and arrived breathless at the
offices in Pollard Street just as Miss Vivian's small open car drew up
at the door.

"Damn!" automatically muttered Tony under her breath, and seeing nothing
for it but to put her bicycle into a corner and efface herself
respectfully to let Miss Vivian pass.

But Miss Vivian, generally so unaware of any member of her staff as not
even to exchange a "Good-morning," elected suddenly to reverse this
policy.

"Good-morning," she said graciously. "We're both late today, I'm
afraid."

The clerk in the hall, who drew an ominous line in her book under the
last signature as the clock struck ten, laughed in a rather awestruck
way and said, "Oh, Miss Vivian!"

"I think you must let Miss Anthony off today," said Char Vivian,
smiling. "As I am late myself, you know."

She went slowly upstairs, just hearing an ecstatic gasp from the two
girls in the hall.

She was vaguely aware that those few gracious words and tone of easy
kindness had secured for her little Miss Anthony's unswerving loyalty
and admiration.

Girls of that age and class _were_ like that, she told herself with a
slight smile.

The smile died away into an expression of weary concentration as she
entered her private office.

"Good-morning, Miss Delmege. Is there much in today?"

"Good-morning, Miss Vivian," said Miss Delmege, elegantly rising from
her knees, in which lowly position she had been trying to coax the
small, indifferent fire to burn. "I am afraid there are a lot of
letters."

Miss Vivian sighed and moved to the looking-glass to take off her hat.
She also was in uniform, and wore several curly stripes of gold braid on
her coat collar and cuffs to denote her exalted position.

Even when she had taken off her ugly and unbecoming felt hat and run her
fingers through the thick, straight masses of reddish hair that hung
over her forehead, Char Vivian contrived to look at least ten years
older than her actual twenty-nine years.

She was very good-looking, with delicate aquiline features, a pale, fair
skin powdered all over with tiny freckles, and beautiful deep-set brown
eyes surrounded by unexpectedly dark lashes.

It was something quite indefinable in the lines round her pretty,
decided mouth, and under her eyes that gave the odd impression of
maturity. Her manner had always, from the age of five, been one of
extreme self-security.

"Now, then, for the letters," she said, as she sat down before the great
roll-top desk. Char Vivian's voice was deep and rather drawling in
character, and she used it with great effect.

"Miss Delmege, did you put these heavenly lilies-of-the-valley here? You
really mustn't--but they're too lovely. Thank you so much. They _do_
make such a difference!"

She sniffed delicately, and Miss Delmege smiled with gratification. The
lilies-of-the-valley had really cost more than she could afford, but
those few words of appreciation sent her to her small table in the
corner with a sense of great satisfaction.

Char tore open one envelope after another with murmured comments. She
frequently affected an absence of mind denoted by fragmentary monologue.

"Transport wanted for fifty men going from the King Street Hospital
today--and they want more sphagnum moss. There ought to be five hundred
bags ready to go out this morning.... I wonder if they've seen to it.
Inquiries--inquiries--inquiries! When are people ever going to stop
asking me questions? Hospital accounts--that can go to the Finance
Department.... The Stores bill--to the Commissariat. What's all
this--transport for that man in Hospital? I shall have to see to that
myself. Look me up the War Office letters as to Petrol regulations, Miss
Delmege, will you? Belgians again; they're very difficult to satisfy,
poor people. Madame Van Damm--I don't remember them--I must send for the
files. Here are some more of those tiresome muddles of Mrs. Potter's. I
told her all about those people on Monday. Why on earth hasn't it been
arranged? Nothing is _ever_ done unless one sees to it oneself. The
Medical Officer of Health wants to see me. What are my appointments for
today, Miss Delmege?"

"The man from the building contractors is coming at twelve, and the
Matron from the Overseas Hospital at three, and then there's that Miss
Jones who's coming to work here. And it's the day you generally go to
the Convalescent Homes."

"I see. Ring up the Medical Officer and say I can give him a quarter of
an hour at two o'clock. I can't really spare that," sighed Miss Vivian,
"but I suppose I shall have to see him."

Miss Delmege knew that, whatever else her chief might depute to her, she
never relinquished to any one a business interview, so she merely looked
concerned and said: "I'm afraid it will be a great rush for you."

Miss Vivian gave her subtle, infrequent smile, and began the customary
series of morning interviews which were supposed to settle the
perplexities of each department for the day. That this supposition was
not invariably correct was made manifest on this occasion by the
demeanour of the unhappy Miss Plumtree, when her chief had made short
work of a series of difficulties haltingly and stammeringly put before
her in sentences made involved and awkward through sheer nervousness.

"Let me have those Requisition Averages by twelve o'clock, please--and I
think that completes you, Miss Plumtree?" concluded Miss Vivian rapidly.

"Thank you, Miss Vivian. Is--are--do these averages include the first
day of the month as well as the last?"

"Yes, of course. And remember to give the gross weight of the supplies
as well as the net weight."

"And I--I divide by the number of days in each month. Yes, I see,"
faltered Miss Plumtree, seeing nothing at all except the brisk tapping
of Miss Vivian's long, slight fingers on the blotting-paper in front of
her, denoting with sufficient clearness that in her opinion the
interview had reached its conclusion some moments since.

"It's for August, September, and October, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Miss Vivian's tone implied that the question was unnecessary in the
extreme, as indeed it was, since Miss Plumtree had been engaged in
conducting the quarterly Requisition Averages to an unsuccessful issue
for the past eighteen months.

"Thank you."

Miss Plumtree faltered from the room, with the consciousness of past
failures heavy upon her.

Char did not like an attitude of sycophantic dejection, and Miss
Plumtree may therefore have been responsible for the very modified
enthusiasm with which the next applicant's request for an afternoon off
duty was received.

"It rather depends, Miss Cox," said Char, her drawl slightly emphasized.
"I thought the work in that department was behindhand?"

"Not now, Miss Vivian," said the grey-haired spinster anxiously. "Mrs.
Tweedale and I cleared it all up last night; I'm quite up to date."

"Well, I'm afraid there's a good deal for you here," said Char rather
cruelly, handing her a bundle of papers. "However, please take your
afternoon off if you want to, and if you feel that the work can be
left."

"Thank you, Miss Vivian."

Miss Cox, who was meek and deferential, left the room, the pleasurable
anticipation of a holiday quite gone from her tired face.

Char looked at the neatly coiled twist of Miss Delmege's sand-coloured
hair.

"Was I a wet-blanket?" she inquired whimsically. "Really, the way these
people are always asking for leave! I wonder what would happen if _I_
took an afternoon off. How long is it since I had a holiday, Miss
Delmege?"

"You've not had one since I've been here," declared her secretary, "and
that's nearly a year."

"Exactly. But then I can't understand putting anything before the work,
personally."

Char returned to her pile of letters and Miss Delmege went on with her
writing in a glow of admiration, and resolved that, after all, she would
come and work on Sunday morning, although nominally no one came to the
office on Sundays except the clerks who took turns for telephone duty,
and Miss Vivian herself in the afternoon.

The morning was a busy one. Telephone calls seemed incessant, and the
operator downstairs was unintelligent and twice cut Miss Vivian off in
the midst of an important trunk call.

"Hallo! hallo! are you there? Miss Henderson, what the _dickens_ are you
doing? You've cut me off again."

Char banged the receiver down impatiently with one hand, while the other
continued to make rapid calculations on a large sheet of foolscap. She
possessed and exercised to the full the faculty of following two or more
trains of thought at the same moment.

Presently she rang her bell sharply, the customary signal that she was
ready to dictate her letters.

Each department was supposed to possess its own typewriter and to make
use of it, and the services of the shorthand-typist, who was amongst the
few paid workers in the office, were exclusively reserved for Miss
Vivian.

The work entailed was no sinecure, the more especially since Miss
Collins was obdurate as to her time-limit of ten to five-thirty. But it
was never difficult for Miss Vivian to commandeer volunteer typists from
the departments when her enormous correspondence appeared to her to
require it.

"Good-morning, Miss Vivian."

"Good-morning," said Char curtly, unsmiling. Miss Collins always gave
her a sense of irritation. She was so jauntily competent, so consciously
independent of the office.

Shorthand-typists could always find work in the big Questerham
manufacturing works, and Miss Collins had only been secured for the
Supply Depôt with difficulty. She received two pounds ten shillings a
week, never worked overtime, and had every Saturday afternoon off. Miss
Vivian had once, in the early days of Miss Collins, suggested that she
might like to wear uniform, and had received a smiling and unqualified
negative, coupled with a candid statement of Miss Collins's views as to
the undesirability of combining clerical work with the exhausting
activities required in meeting and feeding the troop-trains.

"I should be sorry to think that any of _my_ staff would shirk the
little additional work which brings them into contact with the men who
have risked their lives for England," had been the freezing _finale_
with which the dialogue had been brought to a close by the disgusted
Miss Vivian.

Since then her stenographer had continued to frequent her presence in
transparent and _décolletées_ blouses, with short skirts swinging above
silk-stockinged ankles and suede shoes. Even her red, fluffy curls were
unnecessarily decked with half a dozen sparkling prongs. But she was
very quick and intelligent, and Miss Vivian had perforce to accept her
impudent prettiness and complete independence.

Char never, after the first week, made the mistake of supposing that
Miss Collins would ever fall under that spell of personal magnetism to
which the rest of the office was in more or less complete subjection,
and she consequently wasted no smile upon her morning greeting.

"This is to the Director-General of Voluntary Organizations, and please
do not use abbreviations. Kindly head the letter in full."

Miss Collins's small manicured hand ran easily over her notebook,
leaving a trail of cabalistic signs behind it.

Char leant back, half-closing her eyes in a way which served to
emphasize the tired shadows beneath them, and proceeded with her fluent,
unhampered dictation.

She was seldom at a loss for a word, and had a positive gift for the
production of rhetorical periods which never failed to impress Miss
Delmege, still writing at her corner table. In spite of frequent
interruptions, Char proceeded unconcernedly enough, until at the
eleventh entry of a messenger she broke into an impatient exclamation:

"Miss Delmege, please deal for me!"

Miss Delmege swept forward, annihilating the unhappy bearer of the card
with a look of deep reproach, as she took it from her.

"I'm afraid it's some one to see you," she faltered deprecatingly.

Char frowned and took the card impatiently, and Miss Delmege stood by
looking nervous, as she invariably did when her chief appeared annoyed.
Char Vivian, however, although frequently impatient, was not a
passionate woman, and however much she might give rein to her tongue,
seldom lost control of her temper, for the simple reason that she never
lost sight of herself or of her own effect upon her surroundings.

Her face cleared as she read the card.

"Please ask Captain Trevellyan to come up here."

The messenger disappeared thankfully and Miss Delmege retreated
relievedly to her corner.

Char leant back again in her capacious chair, a sheaf of papers, at
which she only cast an occasional glance, before her.

She was not at all averse to being found in this attitude, which she
judged to be most typical of herself and her work, and for an instant
after Captain Trevellyan's booted tread had paused upon the threshold
she affected unawareness of his presence and did not raise her eyes.

"... I am in receipt of your letter of even date, and would inform you
in reply...."

"Oh, John! So you've come for an official inspection?"

"Since you're never to be seen any other way," he returned, laughing,
and grasping her hand.

"I ought to send you away; we're in the midst of a heavy day's work."

"Don't you think you might call a--a sort of truce of God, for the
moment, and tell me something about this office of yours? I'm much
impressed by all I hear."

Miss Delmege, judging from her chief's smile that this suggestion was
approved of, brought forward a chair, and acknowledged Captain
Trevellyan's protesting thanks with a genteel bend at the waist and a
small, tight smile.

The amenities of social intercourse were always strictly held in check
by the limits of officialdom by Miss Vivian's staff, with the exception
of the unregenerate Miss Collins, who tucked her pencil into her belt,
uncrossed her knees, and rose from her chair.

"I'm afraid I'm interrupting you," said Trevellyan politely, addressing
his remark to Char, but casting a quite unnecessary look at the now
smiling Miss Collins.

"I've nearly finished," said Char.

"Shall I come back later?" suggested Miss Collins gaily, swinging a
turquoise heart from the end of an outrageously long gold chain.

"I will ring if I want you," said Miss Vivian in tones eminently
calculated to allay any assumption of indispensability on the part of
her employée.

With a freezing eye she watched Miss Collins swing jauntily from the
room, her red head cocked at an angle that enabled her to throw a
farewell dimple in the direction of Captain Trevellyan.

"Is that one of your helpers?" was the rather infelicitously worded
inquiry which John was inspired to put as Miss Collins disappeared.

"The office stenographer," said Char curtly.

"Why don't you have poor old Miss Bruce up here? She's longing to help
you--couldn't talk about anything but this place last night."

"Dear old Brucey!" said Char, with more languor than enthusiasm in her
voice. "But there are one or two reasons why it wouldn't quite do to
have her in the office; we have to be desperately official here, you
know. Besides, it's such a comfort to get back in the evenings to some
one who doesn't look upon me as the Director of the Midland Supply
Depôt! I sometimes feel I'm turning into an organization instead of a
human being."

Miss Vivian, needless to say, had never felt anything of the sort, but
there was something rather gallantly pathetic in the half-laughing turn
of the phrase, and it sufficed for a weighty addition to Miss Delmege's
treasured collections of "Glimpses into Miss Vivian's Real Self."

She received yet another such a few minutes later, when Captain
Trevellyan began to urge Miss Vivian to come out with him in the new car
waiting at the office door.

"Do! I'll take you anywhere you want to go, and I really do want you to
see how beautifully she runs. Come and lunch somewhere?"

"I'd love it," declared Char wistfully, "but I really mustn't, Johnnie.
There's so much to do."

Either the cousinly diminutive, or something unusually unofficial in
Miss Vivian's regretful voice, caused the discreet Miss Delmege to rise
and glide quietly from the room.

"Miss Vivian really is most awfully human," she declared to a
fellow-worker whom she met upon the stairs. "What do you think I've left
her doing?"

The fellow-worker leant comfortably against the wall, balancing a wire
basket full of official-looking documents on her hip, and said
interestedly:

"Do tell me."

"Refusing to go for a motor ride with a cousin of hers, an officer, who
wants her to see his new car. And she awfully wants to go--I could see
that--it's only the work that's keeping her."

"I must say she _is_ splendid!"

"Yes, isn't she?"

"I think I saw the cousin, waiting downstairs about a quarter of an hour
ago. Is he a Staff Officer, very tall and large, and awfully fair?"

"Yes. Rather nice-looking, isn't he?"

"Quite, and I do like them to be tall. He's got a nice voice, too. You
know--I mean his voice is nice."

"Yes; he has got a nice voice, hasn't he? I noticed it myself. Of
course, that awful Miss Collins made eyes at him like anything. She was
taking letters when he came in."

"Rotten little minx! I wonder if he's engaged to Miss Vivian?"

"I couldn't say," primly returned Miss Delmege, with a sudden access of
discretion, implying a reticence which in point of fact she was not in a
position to exercise.

She did not go upstairs again until Captain Trevellyan and his motor-car
had safely negotiated the corner of Pollard Street, unaccompanied by
Miss Vivian.

This Miss Delmege ascertained from a ground-floor window, and then
returned to her corner table, wearing an expression of compassionate
admiration that Char was perfectly able to interpret.

"I'm afraid that was an interruption to our morning's work," she said
kindly. "What time is it?"

"Nearly one o'clock, Miss Vivian."

"Oh, good heavens! Just bring me the Belgian files, will you? and then
you'd better go to lunch."

"I can quite well go later," said Miss Delmege eagerly. "I--I thought
perhaps you'd be lunching out today."

"No," drawled Char decisively; "in spite of the inducement of the new
car, I shan't leave the office till I have to go to the Convalescent
Homes. I'll send for some lunch when I want it."

Miss Delmege went to her own lunch with a vexed soul.

"I do wish one could get Miss Vivian to eat something," she murmured
distractedly to her neighbour. "I know exactly what it'll be, you know.
She'll sit there writing, writing, writing, and forget all about food,
and then it'll be two o'clock, and she has to see the M.O. of Health and
somebody else coming at three--and she'll have had no lunch at all."

"Doesn't she ever go out to lunch?"

"Only on slack days, and you know how often we get _them_, especially
now that the work is simply increasing by leaps and bounds every day."

"Couldn't you take her some sandwiches?" asked Mrs. Bullivant from the
head of the table. "I could cut some in a minute."

"Oh, no, thank you. She wouldn't like it. She hates a fuss," Miss
Delmege declared decidedly.

The refusal, with its attendant tag of explanatory ingratitude, was
received in matter-of-fact silence by every one.

Miss Vivian's hatred of a fuss, as interpreted by her secretary, merely
redounded to her credit in the eyes of the Hostel.

They ate indifferent pressed beef and tepid milk-pudding, and those who
could afford it--for the most part accompanied by those who could not
afford it--supplemented the meal with coffee and cakes devoured in haste
at the High Street confectioner's, and then hurried back to the office.

It was nearly three o'clock before Miss Delmege ventured to address her
chief.

"I'm afraid you haven't had lunch. Do let me send for something."

Miss Vivian looked up, flushed and tired.

"Dear me, yes. It's much later than I thought. Send out one of the
Scouts for a couple of buns and a piece of chocolate."

"Oh!" protested Miss Delmege, as she invariably did on receipt of this
menu.

Char Vivian did not raise her eyes from the letter she was rapidly
inditing, and her secretary retreated to give the order.

Miss Plumtree, counting on her fingers and looking acutely distressed,
sat at a small table in the hall from whence the Scout was dispatched.

"Is that _all_ she's having for lunch?" she paused in her pursuit of
ever-elusive averages to inquire in awestruck tones.

"Yes, and she's been simply worked to death this morning. And it's
nearly three now, and she won't get back to dinner till long after ten
o'clock, probably; but she never will have more for lunch, when she's
very busy, than just buns and a penny piece of chocolate. That," said
Miss Delmege, with a sort of desperate admiration--"that is just Miss
Vivian all over!"




IV


Char looked wearily at the clock.

The buns and chocolate hastily disposed of in the intervals of work
during the afternoon had only served to spoil the successive cups of
strong tea, which formed her only indulgence, brought to her at five
o'clock. They were guiltless of sustaining qualities. It was not yet
seven, and she never ordered the car until nine o'clock or later.

Her eyes dropped to the diminished, but still formidable, pile of papers
on the table. She was excessively tired, and she knew that the papers
before her could be dealt with in the morning.

But it was characteristic of Char Vivian that she did not make up her
mind then and there to order the car round and arrive at Plessing in
time for eight o'clock dinner and early bed, much as she needed both. To
do so would have jarred with her own and her staff's conception of her
self-sacrificing, untiring energy, her devotion to an immense and
indispensable task, just as surely as would a trivial, easy interruption
to the day's work in the shape of John Trevellyan and his new car, or an
hour consecrated to fresh air and luncheon. Necessity compelled Char to
work twelve hours a day some two evenings a week, in order that the
amount undertaken by the Midland Supply Depôt might be duly
accomplished; but on the remaining days, when work was comparatively
light and over early in the evening, she did not choose to spoil the
picture which she carried always in her mind's eye of the indefatigable
and overtaxed Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.

So Miss Vivian applied herself wearily, once again, to her inspection of
those Army Forms which were to be sent up to the London office on the
morrow.

Presently the door opened and Miss Delmege came in with her hat and coat
on, prepared to go.

"I thought I'd just tell you," she said hesitatingly, "that Miss Jones
has come--the new clerk. Shall I take her over to the Hostel?"

Char sighed wearily.

"Oh, I suppose I'd better see her. If it isn't tonight, it will have to
be tomorrow. I'd rather get it over. Send her up."

"Oh, Miss Vivian!"

"Never mind. I shan't be long."

Miss Vivian smiled resignedly.

As a matter of fact, she was rather relieved at the prospect of an
interview to break the monotony of the evening. The Army Forms in
question had failed to repay inspection, in the sense of presenting any
glaring errors for which the Medical Officer in charge of the Hospital
could have been brought sharply to book.

She unconsciously strewed the papers on the desk into a rather more
elaborate confusion in front of her, and began to open the inkpot,
although she had no further writing to do. The pen was poised between
her fingers when Miss Delmege noiselessly opened the door, and shut it
again on the entry of Miss Jones.

Char put down her pen, raised her heavy-lidded eyes, and said in her
deep, effective voice:

"Good-evening, Miss--er--Jones."

She almost always hesitated and drawled for an instant before
pronouncing the name of any member of her staff. The trick was purely
instinctive, and indicated both her own overcharged memory and the
insignificance of the unit, among many, whom she was addressing.

"How do you do?" said Miss Jones.

Her voice possessed the indefinable and quite unmistakable intonation of
good-breeding, and Char instantly observed that she did not wind up her
brief greeting with Miss Vivian's name.

She looked at her with an instant's surprise. Miss Jones was short and
squarely built, looked about twenty-seven, and was not pretty. But she
had a fine pair of grey eyes in her little colourless face, and her
slim, ungloved hands, which Char immediately noticed, were unusually
beautiful.

"You are from Wales, I believe?" said Char, unexpectedly even to
herself. She made a point of avoiding personalities with the staff. But
there appeared to be something which required explanation in Miss Jones.

"Yes. My father is the Dean of Penally. I have had some secretarial
experience with him during the last five years."

Evidently Miss Jones wished to keep to the matter in hand. Char was
rather amused, reflecting on the fluttered gratification which Miss
Delmege or Miss Henderson would have displayed at any directing of the
conversation into more personal channels.

"I see," she said, smiling a little. "Now, I wonder what you call
secretarial experience?"

"My father naturally has a great deal of correspondence," returned Miss
Jones, without any answering smile on her small, serious face. "I have
been his only secretary for four years. Since the war he has employed
some one else for most of his letters, so as to set me free for other
work."

"Yes; I understood from your letter that you had been working in a
hospital."

"As clerk."

"Excellent. That will be most useful experience here. You know this
office controls the hospitals in Questerham and round about. I want you
to work in this room with my secretary, and learn her work, so that she
can use you as her second."

"I will do my best."

"I'm sure of that," said Miss Vivian, redoubling her charm of manner,
and eyeing the impassive Miss Jones narrowly. "I hope you'll be happy
here and like the work. You must always let me know if there's anything
you don't like. I think you're billeted just across the road, at our
Questerham Hostel?"

"Yes."

"I'll send some one to show you the way."

"Thank you; I know where it is. I left my luggage there before coming
here."

"The new workers generally come to report to me before doing anything
else," said Char, indefinably vexed at having failed to obtain the
expected smile of gratitude.

"However, if you know the way I must let you go now, so as to be in time
for supper. Good-night, Miss Jones."

"Good-night," responded Miss Jones placidly, and closed the door
noiselessly behind her. Her movements were very quiet in spite of her
solid build, and she moved lightly enough, but the Hostel perceived a
certain irony, nevertheless, in the fact that Miss Jones's parents had
bestowed upon her the baptismal name of Grace.

The appeal thus made to a rather elementary sense of humour resulted in
Miss Jones holding the solitary privilege of being the only person in
the Hostel who was almost invariably called by her Christian name. She
enjoyed from the first a strange sort of popularity, nominally due to
the fact that "you never knew what she was going to say next"; in
reality owing to a curious quality of absolute sincerity which was best
translated by her surroundings as "originality." Another manifestation
of it, less easily defined, was the complete good faith which she placed
in all those with whom she came into contact. Only a decided tincture of
Welsh shrewdness preserved her from the absolute credulity of the
simpleton.

Almost the first question put to Miss Jones was that favourite test one
of the enthusiastic Tony, "And what do you think of Miss Vivian?"

"I think," said Miss Jones thoughtfully, "that she is a reincarnation of
Queen Elizabeth."

There was a rather stunned silence in the Hostel sitting-room.

Reincarnation was not a word which had ever sounded there before, and it
carried with it a subtle suggestion of impropriety to several listeners.
Nor was any one at the moment sufficiently _au courant_ with the Virgin
Queen's leading characteristics to feel certain whether the comparison
instituted was meant to be complimentary or insulting in the extreme.

Miss Delmege for once voiced the popular feeling by ejaculating coldly:

"That's rather a strange thing to say, surely!"

"Why? Hasn't it ever struck anybody before? I should have thought it so
obvious. Why, even to look at, you know--that sandy colouring, and the
way she holds her head: just as though there ought to be a ruff behind
it."

"Oh, you mean to look at," said Miss Marsh, the general tension
considerably relaxed as the trend of the conversation shifted from that
dreaded line of abstract discussion whither the indiscreet Miss Jones
had appeared, for one horrid moment, to conduct it.

"Had Queen Elizabeth got freckles? I really don't know much about her,
except that they found a thousand dresses in her wardrobe when she
died," said Tony, voicing, as it happened, the solitary fact concerning
the Sovereign under discussion which any one present was able to
remember, as outcome of each one's varying form of a solid English
education.

"Her power of administration and personal magnetism, you know,"
explained Miss Jones.

"Oh, of course she's perfectly wonderful," Miss Delmege exclaimed, sure
of her ground. "You'll see that more and more, working in her room."

Whether such increased perception was indeed the result of Miss Jones's
activities in the room of the Director might remain open to question.

Char found her very quick, exceedingly accurate, and more conscientious
than the quick-witted can generally boast of being. She remained
entirely self-possessed under praise, blame, or indifference, and Miss
Vivian was half-unconsciously irritated at this tacit assumption of an
independence more significant and no less secure than that of Miss
Collins the typist.

"Gracie, I wish you'd tell me what you _really_ think of Miss Vivian,"
her room-mate demanded one night as they were undressing together.

Screens were chastely placed round each bed, and it was a matter of some
surprise to Miss Marsh that her companion so frequently neglected these
modest adjuncts to privacy, and often took off her stockings, or folded
up even more intimate garments, under the full light, such as it was, of
the gas-jet in the middle of the room.

Miss Jones was extremely orderly, and always folded her clothes with
scrupulous tidiness. She rolled up a pair of black stockings with
exactitude before answering.

"I think she's rather interesting."

"Good Lord, Gracie! if Delmege could only hear you! _Rather
interesting!_ The Director of the Sacred Supply Depôt! You really are
the limit, the things you say, you know."

"Well, that's all I _do_ think. She is very capable, and a fairly good
organizer, but I don't think her as marvellous as you or Miss Delmege or
Tony do. In fact, I think you're all rather _détraquées_ about Miss
Vivian."

Miss Marsh was as well aware as anybody in the Hostel that the insertion
of a foreign word into a British discourse is the height of affectation
and of bad form; and although she could not believe Grace to be at all
an affected person, she felt it due to her own nationality to assume a
very disapproving expression and to allow an interval of at least three
seconds to elapse before she continued the conversation.

"Don't you _like_ her?"

"I'm not sure."

"I suppose you don't know her well enough to say yet?" Miss Marsh
suggested.

"Do you think that has anything to do with it? I often like people
without knowing them a bit," said Grace cordially; "and certainly I
quite often dislike them thoroughly, even if I've only heard them speak
once, or perhaps not at all."

"Then you judge by appearances, which is a great mistake."

Miss Jones said in a thoughtful manner that she didn't think it was
_that_ exactly, and supposed regretfully that Miss Marsh would think she
was "swanking" if she explained that she considered herself a sound and
rapid judge of character.

"Oh, what a sweet camisole, dear!"

"My petticoat-bodice," said Grace matter-of-factly. "I'm glad you like
it. The ribbon always takes a long time to put in, but it does look
rather nice. I like mauve better than pink or blue."

There came a knock at the door.

"Come in!" called Miss Jones, bare-armed and bare-legged in the middle
of the room.

"Wait a minute!" exclaimed the scandalized Miss Marsh, in the midst of a
shuffling process by which her clothes were removed under the nightgown
which hung round her with empty flapping sleeves.

"It's only me," said Miss Plumtree in melancholy tones, walking in. "I'm
just waiting for my kettle to boil."

The gas-ring was on the landing just outside the bedroom door.

Grace looked up.

"How pretty you look with your hair down!" she said admiringly.

"Me? Rubbish!" exclaimed Miss Plumtree, colouring with astonishment and
embarrassment, but with a much livelier note in her voice.

"Your hair is so nice," explained Grace, gazing at the soft brown mop of
curls.

"Oh, lovely, of course."

Miss Plumtree wriggled with confusion, and had no mind to betray how
much the unaffected little bit of praise had restored her spirits. But
she sat down on Grace's bed in her pink cotton kimono in a distinctly
more cheerful frame of mind than that in which she had entered the room.

"Are you in the blues, Gooseberry-bush?" was the sympathetic inquiry of
Miss Marsh.

"Well, I am, rather. It's Miss Vivian, you know. She can be awfully down
on one when she likes."

"I know; you always do seem to get on the wrong side of her. Grace will
sympathize; she's just been abusing her like a pickpocket," said Miss
Marsh, apparently believing herself to be speaking the truth.

Miss Jones raised her eyebrows rather protestingly, but said nothing.
She supposed that in an atmosphere of adulation such as that which
appeared to her to surround Miss Vivian, even such negative criticism as
was implied in an absence of comment might be regarded seriously enough.

"But even if one doesn't like her _awfully_ much, she has a sort of
fascination, don't you think?" said Miss Plumtree eagerly. "I always
feel like a--a sort of bird with a sort of snake, you know."

The modification which she wished to put into this trenchant comparison
was successfully conveyed by the qualifying "sort of," an adverb
distinctly in favour at the Hostel.

"I know what you mean exactly, dear," Miss Marsh assured her. "And of
course she does work one fearfully hard. I sometimes think I shall have
to leave."

"She works every bit as hard as we do--harder. I suppose you'll admit
that, Gracie?"

"Oh yes."

"Don't go on like that," protested Miss Marsh, presumably with reference
to some indefinable quality detected by her in these two simple
monosyllables.

"I only meant," said Grace Jones diffidently, "that it might really be
better if she didn't do quite so much. If she could have her luncheon
regularly, for instance."

"My dear, she simply hasn't the time."

"She could make it."

"The work comes before everything with Miss Vivian. I mean, really it
does," said Miss Plumtree solemnly.

Miss Jones finished off the end of a thick plait of dark hair with a
neat blue bow, and said nothing.

"I suppose even you'll admit that, Gracie?"

Grace gave a sudden little laugh, and said in the midst of it:

"Really, I'm not sure."

"My dear girl, what on earth do you mean?"

"I think I mean that I don't feel certain Miss Vivian would work quite
so hard or keep such very strenuous hours if she lived on a desert
island, for instance."

The other two exchanged glances.

"Dotty, isn't she?"

"Mad as a hatter, I should imagine."

"Perhaps you'll explain what sort of war-work people _do_ on desert
islands?"

"That isn't what I mean, quite," Gracie explained. "My idea is that
perhaps Miss Vivian does _partly_ work so very hard because there are so
many people looking on. If she was on a desert isle she might--find time
for luncheon."

"My dear girl, you're ab-solutely raving, in my opinion," said Miss
Plumtree with simple directness. "There! That's my kettle."

She dashed out of the room, as a hissing sound betrayed that her kettle
had overboiled on to the gas-ring, as it invariably did.

After the rescue had been effected she looked in again and said:

"I suppose you wouldn't let me come in for some of your tea tomorrow
morning, would you, dear? Ours is absolutely finished, and that ass
Henderson forgot to get any more."

"Rather," said Miss Marsh cordially. "This extraordinary girl doesn't
take any, so you can have the second cup."

"Thanks most awfully. I can do without most things, but I can't do
without my tea. Good-night, girls."

It was an accepted fact all through the Hostel that, although one could
do without most things, one could not do without one's tea.

This requirement was of an elastic nature, and might extend from early
morning to a late return from meeting a troop-train at night. Grace
every morning refused the urgent offer of her room-mate to "make her a
cup of nice hot tea," and watched, with a sort of interested surprise,
while Miss Marsh got out of bed a quarter of an hour earlier than was
necessary in order to fill and boil a small kettle and make herself
three and sometimes four successive cups of very strong tea. She was
always willing to share this refreshment with any one, but every room in
the Hostel had its own appliances for tea-making, and made daily and
ample use of them.

Although Miss Jones did not drink tea, she often washed up the cup and
saucer and the little teapot. Miss Marsh suffered from a chronic
inability to arrive at the office punctually, although breakfast was at
nine o'clock, and she had only to walk across the road. But she
frequently said, in a very agitated way, as she rose from the
breakfast-table:

"Excuse me. I simply must go and do my washing. It's Monday, and I've
left it to the last moment."

This meant that the counting and dispatching of Miss Marsh's weekly
bundle for the laundry would occupy all her energies until the desperate
moment when she would look at her wrist-watch, exclaim in a mechanical
sort of way, "Oh, damn! I shall never do it!" and dash out of the house
and across Pollard Street as the clock struck ten.

"I'll wash the tea-things for you."

"Oh, no, dear! Why _should_ you? I can quite well do them to-night."

But Grace knew that when her room-mate came in tired at seven o'clock
that evening she might very likely want "a good hot cup of tea" then and
there, and she accordingly took the little heap of crockery into the
bathroom. Standing over the tiny basin jutting out of the wall, Miss
Jones, with her sleeves carefully rolled up over a very solid pair of
forearms, washed and dried each piece with orderly deliberation, and
replaced them in the corner of Miss Marsh's cupboard.

"I'm afraid you'll be late. Can't I help you?"

"Thanks, dear, but I dare say I can just scramble through. What about
_your_ washing?"

"Oh, I did all that on Saturday night," said Grace, indicating a
respectable brown-paper parcel tied up with string and with an orderly
list pinned on to the outside.

"You're a marvel!" sighed Miss Marsh. "Don't wait, Gracie."

Miss Jones went downstairs and out into Pollard Street. She moved rather
well, and had never been known to swing her arms as she walked. Her face
was very serious. She often thought how kind it was of the others not to
call her a prig, since her methodical habits and innate neatness
appeared to be in such startling contrast to the standards prevailing at
the Hostel. She had never been sent to school, or seen much of other
girls, and the universal liking shown to her by her fellow-workers gave
her almost daily a fresh sense of pleased surprise.

Arrived at the office, she signed her name at the door, and proceeded
upstairs to Miss Vivian's room.

Miss Vivian came in, chilled from her motor drive and with that rather
pinky tinge on her aquiline nose which generally forecasted a troubled
morning. The observant Miss Jones regarded this law very
matter-of-factly as an example of cause and effect. She felt sure that
Miss Vivian only felt at her best when conscious of looking her best,
and hoped very much that the winter would not be a very cold one. It was
obvious that Miss Vivian suffered from defective circulation, which her
sedentary existence had not improved.

But it was Miss Delmege who solicitously suggested fetching a
foot-warmer from the Supplies Department, and who placed it tenderly at
the disposal of Miss Vivian.

After that the atmosphere lightened, and it was with comparative
equanimity that Miss Vivian received the announcement that a lady had
called and desired to see her.

"Please send up her name and her business on a slip of paper, and you
can tell the clerk in the outer hall that I won't have those slipshod
messages sent up," was the reception of the emissary.

"Yes, Miss Vivian."

Miss Delmege gathered up a sheaf of papers from her table and glided
from the room. Grace, whose powers of mental detachment permitted her to
concentrate on whatever she was doing without regard to her
surroundings, went on with her work.

The interviews conducted by Miss Vivian seldom interested her in the
least.

That this one was, however, destined to become an exception, struck her
forcibly when the sudden sound of a piercing feminine voice on the
stairs came rapidly nearer.

"... as for my name on a slip of paper, I never heard such nonsensical
red-tape in my life. Why, Char's mother and I were girls together!"

Although every one in the office was aware that Miss Vivian's baptismal
name was Charmian, and that this was invariably shortened by her
acquaintances to Char, it came as a shock even to the imperturbable Miss
Jones to hear this more or less sacred monosyllable ringing up the
stairs to Miss Vivian's very table.

"Who on earth--" began Char indignantly, when the door flew open before
her caller, who exclaimed shrilly and affectionately on the threshold:

"My dear child, you can't possibly know who I am, but my name is
Willoughby, and when I was Lesbia Carroll your mother and I were girls
together. I had to come in and take a peep at you!"

There was a sort of rustling pounce, and Grace became aware that the
outraged Miss Vivian had been audibly and overpoweringly kissed in the
presence of a giggling Scout and of her own junior secretary.




V


Mrs. Willoughby, in Miss Vivian's private office, reversed all rules of
official precedent.

"Sit down again, my dear child--sit down!" she cried cordially, at the
same time establishing herself close to the table. "I hear you're doing
wonderful work for all these dear people--Belgians and the dear Tommies
and every one--and I felt I simply _had_ to come in and hear all about
it. Also, I want to propound a tiny little scheme of my own which I
think will appeal to you. Or have you heard about it already from that
precious boy John, with whom, I may tell you, I'm simply _madly_ in
love? I'm always threatening to elope with him!"

"I'm afraid," said Char, disregarding her visitor's pleasantry, "that I
can really hardly undertake anything more. We are very much understaffed
as it is, and the War Office is always--"

"I can turn the _whole_ War Office round my little finger, my dear,"
declared Mrs. Willoughby. "There's the dearest lad there, a sort of
under-secretary, who's absolutely devoted to me, and tells me all sorts
of official tit-bits before any one else hears a word about them. I can
get anything I want through him, so you needn't worry about the War
Office. In fact, to tell you rather a shocking little secret, I can get
what I want out of most of these big official places--just a little tiny
manipulation of the wires, you know. [_Cherchez la femme_--though I
oughtn't to say such things to a girl like you, ought I?"]

Char looked at Mrs. Willoughby's large, heavily powdered face, at her
enormous top-heavy hat and over-ample figure, and said nothing.

But no silence, however subtly charged with uncomplimentary meanings,
could stem Mrs. Willoughby's piercing eloquence.

"This is what I want to do, and I'm told at the camp here that it would
be simply invaluable. I want to get up a Canteen for the troops here,
and for all those dear things on leave."

"There are several Y.M.C.A. Huts already."

"My dear! I know it. But I want to do this all on my little own, and
have quite different rules and regulations. My Lewis, who's been in the
Army for over fifteen years, poor angel, tells me that they all--from
the Colonel downwards--think it would be the greatest boon on earth, to
have a _lady_ at the head of things, you know."

"My time is too much taken up; it would be quite out of the question,"
said Char simply.

"Darling child! _Do_ you suppose I meant you--a ridiculously young thing
like you? Of course, it would have to be a married woman, with a certain
regimental position, so to speak. And my Lewis is second in command, as
you know, so that naturally his wife.... You see, the Colonel's wife is
an absolute dear, but an invalid--more or less, and no more _savoir
faire_ than a kitten. A perfect little provincial, between ourselves.
Whereas, of course, I know this sort of job inside out and upside
down--literally, my dear. The _hours_ I've toiled in town!"

"But I'm afraid in that case you oughtn't to leave--"

"I must! I'm compelled to! It's _too_ cruel, but the doctor simply won't
answer for the consequences if I go back to London in my present state.
But work I _must_. One would go quite, quite mad if one wasn't
working--thinking about it all, you know."

"Major Willoughby is--er--in England, isn't he?"

"Thank God, yes!" exclaimed Lesbia, with a fervour that would have
startled her husband considerably. "My heart bleeds for these poor wives
and mothers. I simply thank God upon my knees that I have no son! When
one thinks of it all--England's life-blood--"

Char did not share her mother's objection to eloquence expended upon the
subject of the war, but she cut crisply enough into this _exaltée_
outpouring.

"One is extremely thankful to do what little one can," she said,
half-unconsciously throwing an appraising glance at the files and papers
that were littered in profusion all over the table.

"Indeed one is!" cried Lesbia, just as fervently as before. "Work is the
only thing. My dear, this war is killing me--simply killing me!"

Miss Vivian was not apparently prompted to any expression of regret at
the announcement.

"As I said to Lewis the other day, I must work or go quite mad. And now
this Canteen scheme seems to be calling out to me, and go I must. We've
got a building--that big hall just at the bottom of the street here--and
I'm insisting upon having a regular opening day--so much better to start
these things with a flourish, you know--and the regimental band, and
hoisting the Union Jack, and everything. And what I want you to do is
this."

Lesbia paused at last to take breath, and Char immediately said:

"I'm afraid I'm so fearfully busy today that I haven't one moment, but
if you'd like my secretary to--"

"Not your secretary, but your _entire_ staff, and your attractive self.
I want you _all_ down there to help!"

"Quite impossible," said Char. "I wonder, Mrs. Willoughby, if you have
any idea of the scale on which this Depôt is run?"

"_Every_ idea," declared Lesbia recklessly. "I'm told everywhere that
all the girls in Questerham are helping you, and that's exactly why I've
come. I want girls to make my Canteen attractive--all the prettiest ones
you have."

"I'm afraid my staff was not selected with a view to--er--personal
attractions," said Miss Vivian, in a voice which would have created
havoc amongst her staff in its ironical chilliness.

"Nonsense, my dear Char! I met the sweetest thing on the stairs--a
perfect gem of a creature with Titian-coloured hair. Not in that hideous
uniform, either."

Miss Vivian could not but recognize the description of her typist.

"I don't quite understand," she said. "Do you want helpers on your
opening day, or regularly?"

"Quite regularly--from five to eleven or thereabouts every evening. I
shall be there myself, of course, to supervise the whole thing, and I've
got half a dozen dear things to help me: but what I want is _girls_,
who'll run about and play barmaid and wash up, you know."

"Couldn't my mother spare Miss Bruce sometimes?"

"_Is_ Miss Bruce a young and lively girl?" inquired Mrs. Willoughby, not
without reason. "Besides, I need dozens of them."

"Yes, I see," said Char languidly. She was tired of Mrs. Willoughby, and
it was with positive relief that she heard her telephone-bell ring
sharply.

There was a certain satisfaction in leaning back in her chair and
calling, "Miss--er--Jones!"

Miss Jones moved quietly to answer the insistent bell.

"I'm afraid this rather breaks into our consultation," said Char, deftly
making her opportunity, "but may I write to you and let you know what I
can manage?"

"I shall pop in again and commandeer all these delightful young
creatures of yours. I'm marvellous at recruiting, my dear; every man I
met out of khaki I always attacked in the early days. White feathers,
you know, and everything of that sort. I had no mercy on them. One lad I
absolutely dragged by main force to the recruiting office, though he
said he couldn't leave his wife and babies. But, as I told him, I'd had
to let my Lewis go--he was on the East Coast then--and was _proud_ to do
my bit for England. I dare say the wretch got out of it afterwards,
because they wouldn't let me come in with him while he was actually
being sworn, or whatever it is. Such red-tape!"

Char paid small attention to these reminiscences of Lesbia's past
activities.

"What is it, Miss Jones?"

"The D.G.V.O. is here."

"The Director-General of Voluntary Organizations," said Miss Vivian,
carelessly tossing off the imposing syllables, with the corner of her
eye, as it were, fixed upon Mrs. Willoughby. "In that case, I'm afraid I
must ask you to forgive me."

"I must fly," said Lesbia in a sudden shriek, ignoring her dismissal
with great skill. "Some of those boys from the camp are lunching with
me, and they'll never forgive me if I'm late."

"Ask the Director-General of Voluntary Organizations to come up, Miss
Jones," drawled Char. "And show Mrs. Willoughby the way downstairs."

"Good-bye, you sweet thing!" cried Lesbia gaily, agitating a tightly
gloved white-kid hand. "I shall pop in again in a day or two, and you
must let me help you. I adore Belgians--positively adore them, and can
do anything I like with them."

Mrs. Willoughby's enthusiasm was still audible during her rustling
progress down the stairs.

Char paid full attention to her interview with the opportunely arrived
Director-General of Voluntary Organizations, because she wished him to
think her a most official and business-like woman, entirely capable of
accomplishing all that she had undertaken; but when the dignitary had
departed she gave serious consideration to the scheme so lightly
propounded by Mrs. Willoughby.

The visit of this enthusiast had ruffled her more than she would have
owned to herself, and it was almost instinctively that she strove to
readjust the disturbed balance of her own sense of competence and
self-devotion by waving aside all Miss Delmege's proposals of lunch.

"I'm afraid I haven't got time for anything of that sort today. I've had
a most interrupted morning. No, Miss Delmege, thank you, not even a bun.
You'd better go to your own lunch now."

"I'm not in any hurry, Miss Vivian."

"It's one o'clock," Miss Vivian pointed out, quite aware that her
secretary would now seek her cold mutton and milk-pudding with an
absolute sense of guilt, as of one indulging in a Sybaritic orgy while
her chief held aloof in austere abstention.

Miss Delmege, in fact, looked very unhappy, and said in low tones to her
colleague at the other end of the room: "Miss Jones, if you care to go
to lunch first, I'll take my time off between two and half-past instead,
at the second table."

The second table for lunch was never a popular institution, the mutton
and the milk-pudding having lost what charms they ever possessed, and,
moreover, the time allowed being abridged by almost half an hour. Miss
Delmege, in virtue of her seniority and of her own excessive sense of
superiority, always arranged that Grace should take the second
luncheon-hour, and Miss Jones looked surprised.

"Do you mind, because really I don't care when I go?"

"I'd _rather_ you went first," repeated Miss Delmege unhappily.

"Thank you very much. I'm very hungry, and if you really don't mind, I
shall be delighted to go now," said Grace cheerfully, in an undertone
that nevertheless penetrated to Miss Vivian's annoyed perceptions.

It was evident that Miss Jones had no qualms as to enjoying a
substantial lunch, however long her overworked employer might elect to
fast, and the conviction was perhaps responsible for the sharpness with
which Char exclaimed: "For Heaven's sake don't chatter in the corner
like that! You're driving me perfectly mad--a day when one simply
doesn't know which way to _turn_."

Miss Delmege sank into her chair, looking more overwhelmed than ever,
and Grace said gently, "I'm sorry, Miss Vivian," disregarding or not
understanding Miss Delmege's signal that apologies were out of place in
Miss Vivian's office.

Char drew pen and ink towards her, purely _pour la forme_, and began to
make mechanical designs on the blotting-paper, while her mind turned
over and over the question of Mrs. Willoughby's proposed canteen.

Char thought that her staff's time was fully employed already, as indeed
it was, and had no wish to arouse any possible accusation of
overworking. At the same time, she had hitherto succeeded in taking over
the management of almost every war organization in Questerham and the
district, and was by no means minded to allow a new Canteen, on a large
scale, to spring into life under no better auspices than those of Mrs.
Willoughby.

If she allowed her staff to go down to the Canteen in instalments, Char
decided it would have to be definitely understood that the organization
of the Canteen was entirely in the hands of the Midland Supply Depôt.
She surmised shrewdly that such details of practical requirements as a
boiler, tea-urns, kitchen utensils, and the like, had not yet crossed
the sanguine line of vision of Mrs. Willoughby. It would be easy enough
for Char to assume command when she alone could supply all such needs at
a minimum of expenditure and trouble. The staff, she decided, should be
sent down in shifts of five or six at a time, five nights a week.

Then, Char reflected considerately, no one could have more than one
night in the week, whereas she herself would always put in an
appearance, even if only for a few minutes. It would encourage her
staff, and would also show Mrs. Willoughby quite plainly the sort of
position held by the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.

That afternoon she sent for Miss Collins and dictated a short letter to
Mrs. Willoughby, in which she declared, in the third person singular,
that the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt had considered the
proposed scheme for the opening of a Canteen in Pollard Street, and was
prepared to help with the practical management of it. She would also
supply six voluntary workers between the hours of 7 and 11 P.M. for
every night in the week, Saturday excepted. As she took down these
official statements, Miss Collins's light eyebrows mounted almost into
the roots of her red hair with surprise and disapproval.

Char, being observant, saw these symptoms of astonishment, as she was
meant to do, but few thoughts were further from her mind than that of
consulting the views of her stenographer on any subject. She even took a
certain amount of satisfaction in dictating a rather imperiously worded
document, which informed each department in the office that those
workers who lived in Questerham would be required to report for duty one
night a week for emergency work (7 to 11 P.M.) at the new Canteen which
would shortly be opened in Pollard Street under the direction of Miss
Vivian and Mrs. Willoughby. Followed a list of names, with a
corresponding day of the week attached to each group of six.

"Cut a stencil and roll off six copies for each department and two or
three extra ones for filing," commanded Miss Vivian. "You can add at the
end: '(Signed) Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.'"

"Yes, Miss Vivian."

Miss Collins went away with her eyebrows still erect.

The new field of enterprise was loudly discussed by the staff, as they
took the usual half-hour's break in the afternoon at tea-time.

"Isn't Miss Vivian wonderful?" said Tony excitedly. "She'd take on
_anything_, I do believe."

"And make a success of it, too!"

"Yes, rather."

Hardly any one grumbled at the extra four hours of hard work coming at
the end of the day, and there was a general feeling of disapproval when
Mrs. Bullivant at the Hostel said timidly: "If you're to be down there
at seven, it'll be rather difficult to arrange about supper. Cook won't
like having to get a meal ready for half-past six, and, besides, you'll
be so hungry by eleven o'clock."

"I'm afraid we can't think of that, Mrs. Bullivant," observed Miss
Delmege severely. "Not when we remember that Miss Vivian practically
_never_ gets her supper till long after ten every night, and she doesn't
get much lunch, either. In fact, sometimes she simply won't touch
anything at all in the middle of the day."

And Mrs. Bullivant looked very much rebuked, and said that she must see
what she could do. "Anyhow, it won't be just yet awhile," she exclaimed
with Irish optimism.

"Things move very quickly with Miss Vivian."

"I think they mean the Canteen to open some time in December," said
Grace. "That's not so very far off."

"Time does fly," sighed Miss Plumtree, wishing that the Monthly Averages
were divided from one another by a longer space of time.

"Never mind, Sunday is all the nearer."

Sunday was the day most looked forward to by the whole Hostel, although
an element of uncertainty was added to the enjoyment of it by the
knowledge that the arrival of a troop-train might bring orders to any or
every member of the staff to report for duty at the station at half an
hour's notice.

One or two of the girls were able to go out of Questerham home, or to
their friends, for the week-end, but the majority remained in the
Hostel. Mrs. Bullivant tried to make the day "bright and homey" at the
cost of pathetic exertions to herself, for Sunday was her hardest day of
work.

A certain _laissez-aller_ marked the day from its earliest beginnings.

Almost every one came down to breakfast in bedroom slippers, even though
fully dressed.

"A girl here--before you came, Gracie," Miss Marsh told her room-mate,
"used to come down in a kimono and sort of boudoir-cap arrangement. But
I must say nobody liked it--just like a greasy foreigner, she was. All
the sleeves loose, you know, so that you could see right up her arms.
Myself, I don't call that awfully nice--not at the breakfast-table."

"It would be very cold to do that now," said Grace, shivering. She
disliked the cold very much, and the Hostel was not warmed.

"Yes, wouldn't it? It's a comfort to get into one's own clothes again
and out of uniform, isn't it, dear? That's what I like about
Sundays--dainty clothes again," said Miss Marsh, fiercely pulling a comb
backwards through her hair so as to make it look fluffy.

"I like you in uniform, though," said Miss Jones, who had received
several shocks on first beholding the Sunday garbs known to the Hostel
as "plain clothes."

"Very sweet of you to say that, dear. You always look nice yourself,
only your plain clothes are too like your uniform--just a white blouse
and dark skirt you wear, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid it's all I've got," said Grace apologetically; and Miss
Marsh at once thought that perhaps poor little Gracie couldn't afford
many things, and said warmly:

"But white blouses are awfully nice, dear, and _crêpe de Chine_ always
looks so _good_."

Then she thrust her stockinged feet into her red slippers and shuffled
across the room. "How lucky you are! You never have to back-comb your
hair, do you?"

"I never do back-comb it, because it's so bad for it," said Grace
seriously. She had a book open on the dressing-table in front of her,
but was characteristically quite as much interested in Miss Marsh's
conversation as in her own reading.

"'Daniel Deronda'?" said Miss Marsh, looking over her. "Never heard of
him. How fond you are of reading, Gracie! I love it myself, but I don't
ever have time for it here."

The plea being one which never fails to rouse the scorn of every
book-lover, Grace remained silent. Her solitary extravagance was the
maximum subscription to the Questerham library.

"There's the bell," said Miss Marsh; "I must come up and make my bed
afterwards. Thank goodness, there's no hurry today."

They went down together, Miss Marsh's heelless slippers clapping behind
her on every step.

In the sitting-room after breakfast the girls clustered round the tiny
smoking fire.

"It's going to rain all day. How beastly!" said Tony. "Who's going to
church?"

"I shall probably go to evensong," remarked Miss Delmege, upon which
several people at once decided that they would risk the weather and go
to the eleven o'clock service.

There was only one church in Questerham which the Hostel thought it
fashionable to attend.

The day was spent in more or less desultory lounging over the fire. Miss
Delmege wrote a number of letters and Tony darned stockings. Grace Jones
read "Daniel Deronda" to herself.

Lunch was protracted, and Mrs. Bullivant, to mark the day, exerted
herself and made some rather smoked coffee, which she brought to the
sitting-room triumphantly.

"Isn't there going to be any music this afternoon?" she inquired.

Every one declared that music was the very thing for such an afternoon,
but no one appeared very willing to provide it.

"Do sing, somebody," implored Miss Henderson. "Plumtree?"

Miss Plumtree had a beautiful deep voice, utterly untrained and
consequently unspoilt. She stood up willingly enough and sang all the
songs that she was asked for. The taste of the Hostel was definite in
songs. "A Perfect Day" and "The Rosary" were listened to in the absolute
silence of appreciation, and then some one asked for a selection from
the latest musical comedy.

Grace played Miss Plumtree's accompaniments, and loved listening to her
soft, deep tones. She tried to make her sing "Three Fishers," but Miss
Plumtree said no: it was too sad for a Sunday afternoon, and it was some
one else's turn.

Musical talent in the Hostel was limited, and the only other owner of a
voice was Miss Delmege, the possessor of a high, thin soprano, which,
she often explained, had been the subject of much attention on the part
of "a really first-rate man in Clifton."

It might remain open to question whether the energies of the really
first-rate man could not have been turned into channels more
advantageous than that of developing Miss Delmege's attenuated thread of
voice. Whatever the original organ might have been, it was now educated
into a refined squeak, overweighted with affectations which to Miss
Delmege represented the art of production. She sang various improvident
love-songs in which Love--high F, attained to by a species of upwards
slide on E and E sharp--was all, When eventide should fall--slight
tremolo and a giving out of breath rather before the accompanist had
struck the final chord.

"You should take the _finale_ rather more _à tempo_, dear," said the
singer, in a professional way which finally vindicated the
first-rateness of the man at Clifton.

Every one thanked Miss Delmege very much, and said that was a sweetly
pretty song; and then Grace Jones played the piano while Tony and Miss
Henderson made toast for tea and put the largest and least burnt pieces
aside for her. Tea, with the aid of conversation and the making of
innumerable pieces of toast over the least smoky parts of the fire,
could almost be prolonged till supper-time.

"I must say, I do enjoy doing nothing," said Miss Henderson, voicing the
general sentiment at the end of the day of rest.

"Poor Mrs. Potter is on the telephone. How cold she'll be, sitting there
all the evening!"

"I hope she saw to Miss Vivian's fire," said Miss Delmege solicitously.
"I particularly reminded her to build up a good fire in Miss Vivian's
room. She does feel the cold so."

"Perhaps she didn't come this afternoon," said Grace. "There was nothing
left over in her basket last night."

"Oh, she always comes," Miss Delmege said quickly and rather
resentfully. "I've never known her miss a Sunday yet. Besides, I know
she was there today. I saw the light in her window as I came back from
church."

"I do believe," said Tony in a stage whisper, "that Delmege goes to
evening church on purpose to look up at the light in Miss Vivian's
window as she comes back."

But the joke was received silently, as being in but indifferent taste,
and verging on irreverence almost equally as regarded church and the
Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.




VI


The new Canteen in Pollard Street was opened before Christmas.

Lesbia Willoughby, in an immense overall of light blue-and-white check,
stood behind a long buffet and demanded stridently whether she wasn't
too exactly like a barmaid for words, and Char's consignment of helpers
worked for the most part briskly and efficiently, only the unfortunate
Miss Plumtree upsetting a mug of scalding tea over herself at the
precise moment when Miss Vivian, trim and workmanlike in her dark
uniform, entered the big hall and stood watching the scene with her
arrogant, observant gaze. She did not ask Miss Plumtree whether her hand
was scalded, but neither did she rebuke her very evident clumsiness. She
moved slowly and imperially through the thick tobacco-laden atmosphere,
speaking to several of the men, and silently observing the demeanour of
her staff.

The following week she issued an office circular in which the precise
direction which the activity of each worker was to take was inexorably
laid down.

Miss Plumtree was banished _à perpetuité_ to the pantry, to wash up at
full speed over a sink. She worked at the Canteen on Mondays, always the
busiest evening. In the same shift were Mrs. Potter and Miss Henderson,
to each of whom was appointed the care of an urn, Grace Jones, Miss
Delmege, and Miss Marsh. Miss Delmege stood behind the buffet, which
position, she said, seemed very strange to her from being so like a
counter in a shop, and the other two took orders at the various small
tables in the hall, and hurried to and fro with laden trays.

No one would have dreamed of disputing this arbitrary disposal of
energies, but it struck Grace as extremely unfortunate that Miss Marsh
and Miss Delmege should select their first Monday together at the
Canteen for the form of unpleasantness known as "words." Miss Jones
became the medium by which alone either would address the other.

"I'm sorry, dear, but Delmege has really got on my nerves lately, and
you can tell her I said so if you like. When it comes to suggesting that
I don't do sufficient work, there's simply nothing more to be said. You
heard her the other night saying some people were so lucky they could
always get off early when they liked. Just because I'd cleared up by six
o'clock, for once in a way!"

"But she didn't say she meant you," urged Miss Jones, who was far too
sympathetic not to take any grievance confided to her at the teller's
own valuation, and foresaw besides an extremely awkward evening at the
Canteen.

"Some people aren't straightforward enough to say what they mean right
out, but that doesn't prevent others from seeing the point of the sort
of remarks they pass," declared Miss Marsh cryptically.

"If she told you she really hadn't meant anything personal, wouldn't it
be all right?"

But Grace did not make the suggestion very hopefully, and her room-mate
merely repeated gloomily that Delmege had really got on her nerves
lately, and though she did not think herself one to bear malice, yet
there were limits to all things.

Grace's success with Miss Delmege on their way down the street at seven
o'clock that evening, was even less apparent.

"It's all very well, dear, but I've always been _most_ sensitive. I
can't help it. I know it's very silly, but there it is. As a tiny tot,
mother always used to say of me, 'That child Vera is so sensitive, she
can't bear a sharp word.' I know it's very silly to be thin-skinned, and
causes one a great deal of suffering as one goes through life, but it's
the way I'm made. I always was so."

This complacent monologue lasted almost to the bottom of Pollard Street,
when Grace interrupted desperately: "Do make it up with her before we
start this job. It's so much nicer to be all cheerful together when
we've got a hard evening in front of us."

"I'm quite willing to be friendly, when Miss Marsh speaks to me first.
At the present moment, dear, as you know, she's behaving very strangely
indeed, and doesn't speak to me at all. Of course, I don't mind either
way--in fact, it only amuses me--but I don't mind telling you, Gracie,
that I think her whole way of carrying on is most strange altogether."

Grace felt a desperate certainty that affairs were indeed past remedy
when Miss Delmege had to resort so freely to her favourite adjective
"strange" to describe the manners and conduct of Miss Marsh.

She entered the hall rather dejectedly. It was very tiring to hurry
about with heavy trays at the end of a long day's work, and the
atmosphere seemed thicker than ever tonight and the noise greater. Grace
hung up her coat and hat, and hastily made room on the already
overcrowded peg for Miss Marsh's belongings, as she heard Miss Delmege
say gently "_Excuse_ me," and deliberately appropriate to her own use
the peg selected by her neighbour.

"Did you see that?" demanded Miss Marsh excitedly. "Isn't that Delmege
all over? After this, Gracie, I shall simply not speak to her till she
apologizes. Simply ignore her. Believe me, dear, it's the only way. I
shall behave as though Delmege didn't exist."

This threat was hardly carried out to the letter. No one could have
failed to see a poignant consciousness of Miss Delmege's existence in
the elaborate blindness and deafness which assailed Miss Marsh when
within her neighbourhood.

Miss Delmege adopted a still more trying policy, and addressed acid
remarks in a small, penetrating voice to her surroundings.

"I must say the state of _some_ trays is like nothing on earth!" she
said to Grace, when Miss Marsh had spilt a cup of cocoa over her
tray-cloth and brought it back to the counter for a fresh supply. "How
the poor men stand it! I must say I do like things to be _dainty_
myself. Give me a meal daintily served and I don't care what it is! All
depends what one's been used to, I suppose."

"I should be awfully obliged, Gracie, if you could get hold of a clean
tray-cloth for me," said Miss Marsh furiously. "There doesn't seem to be
anybody not-what-I-call-_capable_ here."

Grace looked appealingly at Miss Delmege, but the pince-nez were
directed towards the roof, and Miss Delmege's elegantly curved fingers
were engaged in swiftly unloading a tray of clean plates.

"A clean cloth for this tray, please," said Gracie rapidly. "There's
been a spill."

Miss Delmege, appearing quite capable of seeing through the back of her
head, still kept her back turned to the infuriated Miss Marsh, and said
coldly: "How very messy, dear! But I'm sure you're not responsible for
that. Some people are so strange; their fingers seem to be all thumbs."

"I can't stand here all night, Gracie!" exclaimed Miss Marsh, recklessly
tipping all the dirty crockery from the tray on to the counter. "You
wouldn't let me have your cloth, I suppose, would you, dear?" At the
same time she skilfully disproved her own supposition by rapidly
possessing herself of Grace's clean tray-cloth.

"Of all the coolness! Here, dear; I'll give you another one. What's your
order?"

"Cup of tea, sausage and mashed, roll of bread."

Miss Delmege gave the short mirthless snigger with which she always
acclaimed such orders, so as to make it clear that she did not take
anything so vulgar as a sausage and mashed potatoes seriously, and
further exclaimed, "They are quaint, aren't they?" as she telephoned
through to the kitchen.

"Miss Jones," said Char's cool voice behind her, "I've been watching you
for the last five minutes. Kindly ask for what you want a little more
quickly. You seem to forget that the man is waiting for his supper."

She waited while the order was being rapidly executed from the kitchen,
watching the two girls. Miss Delmege coloured faintly, and moved about
restlessly under the scrutiny of which she was obviously conscious, but
Grace's small, pale face had not altered, and she stood by the counter
waiting for her tray, gazing quite interestedly at a small group of new
arrivals.

Mrs. Willoughby stood at the door, eagerly ushering in visitors whom she
had obviously invited to survey the scene of her activities.

"This is my little job--plenty of the dear fellows here tonight, you
see. Aren't they dears, and don't they look too delightfully at home for
words? I must fly back to my barmaid's job now; you'll see me behind the
counter in another minute, Joanna. I find I have the most wonderful
talent for _chaff_--the men love it so, you know. Do come in,
John--you're my chief asset here tonight; the men will simply love your
Military Cross. I want you to come round and tell one or two of my
special pets exactly how you won it."

Only the secret pressure of his Cousin Joanna's hand on his arm and the
mirthful gleam in her blue eyes prevented Captain Trevellyan, with his
Military Cross, from taking an instant departure.

Lady Vivian raised her _lorgnette_. "Where's Char?"

"Much too busy on her high official horse even to see me," cried Lesbia
with a sort of jovial spite. "Now, Joanna, I insist upon your getting
into an overall at once, and helping me. I'll commandeer one."

Grace Jones went past them with her laden tray, and Mrs. Willoughby
grasped her arm.

"I want you to find me an overall for this lady before you stir another
_step_," she shrieked emphatically.

"Nonsense, Lesbia!" interposed Lady Vivian brusquely. "I don't suppose
there is such a thing to spare, and, besides, I don't want one."

She wore the plainest of dark coats and skirts and a soft silk shirt.
Grace looked at her with composed admiration and a sense of gratitude.
She did not wish to be further delayed with the heavy tray on her hands.

"There's my dear Lance-Corporal!" exclaimed Lesbia, and hurled herself
in the direction of a burly form which appeared strongly impelled to
seek cover behind the piano as she advanced.

Captain Trevellyan gently took the tray from Miss Jones.

"Where shall I take it?"

"Thank you very much," said Grace thankfully, dropping her aching arms.
"That table over there, right at the end, if you will. It's very kind of
you."

She turned to Lady Vivian rather apologetically. "I'm afraid I ought not
to have let him do that, but we're rather behindhand tonight. Are you
come to help?"

She supposed that this tall, curiously attractive new-comer was the wife
of one of the officers from the camp.

"Yes, if you'll tell me what to do."

"If you'd carry trays? One of our workers is--is _impeded_ tonight,"
said Grace, conscientiously selecting a euphemism for the peculiar
handicap under which Miss Marsh was labouring.

For the next two hours Lady Vivian worked vigorously, in spite of a
protest from John, who took the view of feminine weakness peculiar to
unusually strong men.

"These trays are too heavy for any woman to carry! It's monstrous! I
shall tell Char so."

"By all means tell her. I certainly think it's very bad for these girls,
and at the end of a long day's work, too. But as for me, you know I'm as
strong as a horse, Johnnie, and I enjoy the exercise. It warms me!"

Her face was glowing and her step elastic. John realized, not for the
first time, that Sir Piers's slow, rambling walks round the grounds and
still slower evening games of billiards formed the major part of his
Cousin Joanna's physical activities. He stood watching her thoughtfully.

Char stopped in his immediate vicinity, and gave a couple of orders in
her slow, despotic drawl. She rather wanted Johnnie to see how promptly
and unquestioningly they were received.

Johnnie, however, appeared to have his thoughts elsewhere, and Char
rather vexedly followed his gaze.

"How I wish my mother wouldn't do this sort of thing!" she said under
her breath. "It's most tiring for her, and besides--"

"Besides?" inquired Trevellyan, always courteous, but never of the
quickest at catching an inflection.

"I'm afraid I think it _infra dig_. Darting about with all these girls,
when she's capable of such very different sort of work--if only she'd do
it!"

"My dear Char, what on earth do you want her to do?" demanded
Trevellyan, to whom it came as a shock that any one who was privileged
to live near Joanna should think her anything but perfect.

"She is an extremely capable woman of business; why shouldn't she take
up some big work for the Government? They are crying out for educated
women."

"She couldn't possibly leave your father alone at Plessing."

"She could do a certain amount of work at home even without that. The
truth is, Johnnie, that neither she nor my father have _realized_
there's a war on at all. They've no sons out there in the trenches, and
it hasn't hit them materially; they've not felt it in any single,
smallest way. I shouldn't say it to any one but you, but there are times
at Plessing when I could go _mad_. To hear my father talk on and on
about whether some tree on the estate needs cutting or not, just as
though on the other side of a little strip of sea--"

She broke off with a shudder that was not altogether histrionic.

"And mother--she wouldn't even knit socks, because it interfered with
his billiards in the evenings! I don't understand her, Johnnie. She must
_know_ what it all means, yet it's all shoved away in the background.
Brucey tells me that she's under standing orders not to discuss the news
in the papers at breakfast, and mother won't have a single war-book in
the house--not even a war-novel, if she can help it. It's as though they
were deliberately trying to blind themselves. I _can't_ understand it."

Trevellyan did not feel sure that he understood it, either, but, unlike
Char, there was in his mind no shadow of criticism for that which he did
not understand. The limitation, Trevellyan always felt, was entirely
his.

But he was able to look sympathetically also at Char's vexed
bewilderment.

"You're not at Plessing very much, nowadays, yourself."

"No. I don't think I could bear it, Johnnie. Of course they say I'm
doing too much, but, after all, I'm of an age to decide that for myself,
and to my mind there's simply no choice in the matter. Thank Heaven one
_can_ work!"

"Your undertaking is a colossal thing, in its way. It's wonderful of
you, Char!"

She looked pleased.

"It's running well at present. Of course, I know what a tiny part of the
whole it is really, but--" She broke off quickly as Lady Vivian joined
them.

"Who is the little dark-haired girl I've been working with, Char? The
one at that table...."

"Oh, a Miss--er--Jones," said Char languidly.

"You never told me you had any one of her sort here. I want to ask her
out to Plessing. Couldn't we take her back in the car tonight?"

"My dear mother!" Char opened her eyes in an expression of exaggerated
horror. "One of my staff?"

"Well?" queried Lady Vivian coolly, stripping off her borrowed overall.

"Quite out of the question. You don't in the least realize the official
footing on which I have to keep those women."

"I should have thought you needn't be any the less official for showing
some friendliness to a girl who's come all the way from Wales to help
you."

"She's my under-secretary, mother."

"What! sub-scrub to the genteel Miss Delmege? She's got ten times her
brains, and is a lady into the bargain."

It infuriated Char that her mother's cool, tacit refusal to acknowledge
the infallibility of the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt could
always make her feel like a little girl again.

She rallied all her most official mannerisms together.

"It's quite impossible for me to differentiate between the various
members of the staff, or to make any unofficial advances to any of
them."

"Very well, my dear. As, thank Heaven, I'm not a member of your staff, I
can remain as unofficial as I please, and have nice little Miss Jones
out to see me."

"Mother," said Char in an agony, "it's simply _impossible_. The girl
would never know her place in the office again; and think of all the
cackling there'd be at the Questerham Hostel about my asking any one out
to Plessing. Johnnie, do tell her it's out of the question."

Trevellyan looked at Joanna with a laugh in his blue eyes. He realized,
as Char would never realize, that her assumption of officialdom always
provoked her mother to the utterance of ironical threats which she had
never the slightest intention of fulfilling.

She shrugged her shoulders slightly at her daughter's vehemence, and
crossed over to where Grace Jones was putting on her coat and hat again.

"Good-night. I hope you're not as tired as you look," she said with a
sort of abrupt graciousness.

"Oh no, thank you. It's been an extra busy night. It was so kind of you
to help."

"I wish I could come again," said Lady Vivian rather wistfully, "but I
don't know that I shall be able to."

Lesbia Willoughby, dashing past them at full speed, found time to fling
a piercing rebuke over her shoulder.

"There's _always_ a will where there's a way, Joanna. Look at me!"

Neither of them took advantage of the invitation, and Joanna said
irrelevantly: "I should like you to come and see me, if you will, but I
know you're at work all day. I must try and find you next time I come
into Questerham."

"Thank you very much," said Grace in a pleased voice. "I should like
that very much indeed. Good-night."

"Good-night," repeated Joanna, and went back to where her daughter, with
a rather indignant demeanour, was waiting for her.

"Well?" asked Char, rather sullenly.

Lady Vivian, who almost invariably became flippant when her daughter was
most in earnest, said provokingly: "Well, my dear, I've made
arrangements for all sorts of unofficial rendezvous. You may see Miss
Delmege at Plessing yet."

"Miss Delmege is a very good worker," said Char icily. "She's very much
in earnest, always ready to stay overtime and finish up anything
important."

"I'm sure Miss Jones is good at her job, too," said Trevellyan,
supposing himself to be tactful.

"Fairly good. Not extraordinarily quick-witted, though, and much too
sure of herself. I can't help thinking it's rather a pity to distinguish
her from the others, mother; she's probably only too ready to take airs
as it is, if she's of rather a different class."

"Fiddlesticks!" declared Lady Vivian briskly. "Put on your coat, Char,
and come along. I can't keep the car waiting any longer. Rather a
different class indeed! What has that to do with it? The girl's most
attractive--an original type, too."

"Of course, if mother has taken one of her sudden violent fancies to
this Jones child, I may as well make up my mind to hear nothing else,
morning, noon, or night," Char muttered to John Trevellyan, who replied
with matter-of-fact common sense that Char wasn't at Plessing for more
than an hour or two on any single day, let alone morning, noon, and
night.

"Char," said Lady Vivian from the car, "if you don't come now I shall
leave you to spend the night at the Questerham Hostel, where you'll lose
all your prestige with the staff, and have to eat and sleep just like an
ordinary human being."

The Director of the Midland Supply Depôt got into her parent's motor in
silence, and with a movement that might have been fairly described as a
flounce.

The members of the staff walked up the street towards the Hostel.

"Who was the lady in black who helped with the trays?" asked Grace. "She
was so nice."

"My dear, didn't you know? That was Miss Vivian's _mother_!"

"Oh, was it?" said Grace placidly. "I didn't know that. Miss Vivian
isn't very like her, is she?"

"No. Of course, Miss Vivian's far better looking. I'm not saying it
because it's her," added Miss Delmege with great distinctness, for the
benefit of Miss Marsh and Mrs. Potter, walking behind, from one of whom
a sound of contemptuous mirth had proceeded faintly. "It's simply a
fact. Miss Vivian is far better looking than Lady Vivian ever was. Takes
after her father--Sir Piers Vivian he is, you know."

Miss Delmege had only once been afforded a view of the back of Sir Piers
Vivian's white head in church, but she made the assertion with her usual
air of genteel omniscience.

At the Hostel Mrs. Bullivant was waiting for them. It was past eleven
o'clock, and the fire had gone out soon after eight; but in spite of
cold and weariness, Mrs. Bullivant was unconquerably bright.

"Come along; I'll have some nice hot tea for you in a moment. The kettle
is on the gas-ring. I _am_ sorry the fire's out, but it smoked so badly
all the evening I thought I'd better leave it alone. Sit down; I'm sure
you're all tired."

"Simply dead," exclaimed Miss Marsh. "So are you, aren't you, Plumtree,
after all those awful plates and dishes--I must say your washing-up job
is the worst of the lot."

"I'm going to bed. I can't keep on my feet another minute, tea or no
tea. If I don't drag myself upstairs now I never shall. It's fatal to
sit down; one can't get up again."

"That's right," assented Miss Marsh. "I'll bring up your tea when I
come, dear."

"Angel, thanks awfully. Good-night, ladies and gentlemen."

Miss Plumtree left the sitting-room with this languidly facetious
valediction.

"That girl _does_ look tired. I hope she gets into bed quickly,"
observed Mrs. Potter, pulling off her hat and exposing a rakishly
_décoiffé_ tangle of wispy hair.

"Not she--she'll dawdle for ages," prophesied Miss Marsh. "Still, it's
something if she gets into her dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, out
of her corsets, you know."

Miss Delmege put down her cup of tea.

"Rather a strange subject we seem to be on for meal-time, don't we?" she
remarked detachedly to Grace.

"Meal-time?" exclaimed Miss Henderson derisively.

"That's what I said, dear, and I'm in the habit of meaning what I say,
as far as I know."

"I really don't know how you can call it meal-time when we're not even
at table. Besides, if we were, there's nothing _in_ what Marsh
said--absolutely nothing at all."

"Oh, of course, some people see harm in anything," burst out Miss Marsh,
very red. "The harm is in their own minds, is what I say, otherwise they
wouldn't see any."

"That's right," agreed Miss Henderson, but below her breath.

Miss Delmege turned with dignity to her other neighbour.

"I may be peculiar, but that's how I feel about it. I imagine that you,
as a married woman, will agree with me, Mrs. Potter?"

Mrs. Potter did not agree with her at all, but something in the appeal,
some subtle hint of the dignity of Mrs. Potter's position amongst so
many virgins, caused her to temporize feebly.

"Really, Miss Delmege, you mustn't ask me. I--I quite see with you--but
at the same time--there wasn't anything in what Miss Marsh said, now,
was there? I mean, really. Simply corsets, you know."

Nearly every one had by this time forgotten exactly what Miss Marsh
_had_ said, and only retained a general impression of licentiousness in
conversation.

"We're all girls together," exclaimed Miss Marsh furiously.

"Gentlemen in the room would be a very different thing," Miss Henderson
supported her.

"I'll take a second cup, Mrs. Bullivant, if you please," said Miss
Delmege with dignity.

"There!" exclaimed Miss Henderson.

Miss Marsh had suddenly begun to cry.

Mrs. Bullivant hastily poured out more tea, and said uncertainly: "Come,
come!"

"There's no call for any one to cry, that I can see," observed Miss
Delmege, still detached, but in a tone of uneasiness.

"The fact is, I'm not myself today," sobbed Miss Marsh.

"What is it?" said Gracie sympathetically. She slipped a friendly hand
into her room-mate's.

"I had a letter which upset me this morning. A great friend of mine,
who's been wounded--a boy I know most awfully well."

"Why didn't you tell me, dear?" asked Miss Henderson. "I didn't even
know you had a boy out there."

"Oh, not a _feawncy_--only a chum," said Miss Marsh, still sniffing.

"Is he bad, dear?"

"A flesh-wound in the arm, and something about trench feet."

"That's a nice slow thing, and they'll send him to England to get well,"
prophesied Grace.

Miss Delmege rose from her seat.

"I'm sorry you've been feeling upset," she said to Miss Marsh. "It seems
rather strange you didn't say anything sooner, but I'm sorry about it."

"Thank you," Miss Marsh replied with a gulp. "If I've been rather sharp
in my manner today, I hope you won't think I meant anything. This has
rather upset me."

Miss Delmege bowed slightly, and Grace, fearing an anticlimax, begged
Miss Marsh to come up to bed.

The final amende was made next morning, when Miss Delmege, in a
buff-coloured drapery known as "my fawn _peignwaw_," came to the door
and asked for admittance.

Grace opened the door, and Miss Delmege said, in a voice even more
distinct than usual: "I know Miss Marsh was tired last night, dear, so
I've brought her a cup of our early tea."




VII


"Mother, are you coming to the Canteen again tomorrow? You remember what
a rush it was last Monday, and it'll be just as bad again."

"No, Char, I am _not_," was the unvarnished reply of Lady Vivian.

Char compressed her lips and sighed. She would have been almost as much
disappointed as surprised if her mother had suddenly expressed an
intention of appearing regularly at the Canteen, but she knew that Miss
Bruce was looking at her with an admiring and compassionate gaze.

Sir Piers, who substituted chess for billiards on Sunday evenings
because he thought it due to the servants to show that the Lord's Day
was respected at Plessing, looked up uneasily.

"You're not going out again tomorrow, eh, my dear? I missed our game
sadly the other night."

"No, it's all right; I'm not going again."

Joanna never raised her voice very much, but Sir Piers always heard what
she said. It made Char wonder sometimes, half irritably and half
ashamedly, whether he could not have heard other people, had he wanted
to. The overstrain from which she herself was quite unconsciously
suffering made her nervously impatient of the old man's increasing
slowness of perception.

"And where has Char been all this afternoon? I never see you about the
house now," Sir Piers said, half maunderingly, half with a sort of
bewilderment that was daily increasing in his view of small outward
events.

"I've been at my work," said Char, raising her voice, partly as a vent
to her own feelings. "I go into the office on Sunday afternoons always,
and a very good thing I do, too. They were making a fearful muddle of
some telegrams yesterday."

"Telegrams? You can't send telegrams on a Sunday, child; they aren't
delivered. I don't like you to go to this place on Sundays, either.
Joanna, my dear, we mustn't allow her to do that."

Char cast up her eyes in a sort of desperation, and went into the
further half of the drawing-room, where Miss Bruce sat, just hearing her
mother say gently: "Look, Piers, I shall take your castle."

"Brucey," said Char, "I think they'll drive me mad. I know my work is
nothing, really--such a tiny, infinitesimal part of a great whole--but
if I could only get a _little_ sympathy. It does seem so extraordinary,
when one has been working all day, giving one's whole self to it all,
and then to come back to this sort of atmosphere!"

Miss Bruce was perhaps the only person with whom Char was absolutely
unreserved. In younger days Miss Bruce had been her adoring governess,
and the old relations still existed between them. Char knew that Miss
Bruce had always thought Lady Vivian's management of her only child
terribly injudicious, and that in the prolonged antagonism between
herself and her mother Miss Bruce's silent loyalty had always ranged
itself on Char's side.

"It's very hard on you, my dear," she sighed. "But I have been afraid
lately--have you noticed, I wonder?"

"What?"

"Sir Piers seems to me to be failing; he is so much deafer, so much more
dependent on Lady Vivian."

"He's always _that_," said Char. "I think it's only the beginning of the
winter, Brucey. He always feels the cold weather."

But a very little while later Miss Bruce's view received unexpected
corroboration.

Three Sundays later, when the weather had grown colder than ever, and
Char was, as usual, spending the afternoon and evening at the Depôt,
Mrs. Willoughby paid a call at Plessing.

She was followed into the room, with almost equal unwillingness, by her
husband and a small, immensely stout Pekinese dog, with bulging eyes and
a quick, incessant bark that only Mrs. Willoughby's voice could
dominate.

"Darling Joanna!" she shrieked. "Puffles, wicked, wicked boy, be quiet!
Isn't this an invasion? But my Lewis did so want--I shall smack 'oo if
'oo isn't quiet directly. _Do_ you mind this little brown boy, who goes
_everywhere_ with his mammy? I knew you'd love him if you saw him--but
_such_ a noise! Lewis, tell this naughty Puff his mother can't hear
herself speak."

"Down, sir!" said Lewis, in tones which might have quelled a mastiff
with hydrophobia.

Puff waddled for refuge to his mistress, who immediately gathered him on
to her lap as she sank on to the sofa.

"Did 'oo daddy speak in a big rough voice, and frighten the poor little
manikin?" she inquired solicitously. "Isn't he _rather_ twee, Joanna?"

"I've not seen it before," said Joanna, in tones more civil than
enthusiastic.

"It!" screamed Lesbia. "She calls 'oo _it_, my Puffles! as though he
wasn't the sweetest little brown boy in the whole world. It! You've hurt
his little feelings too dreadfully, my dear--look at him sulking!"

Puff had composed himself into a sort of dribbling torpor.

"That dog doesn't get enough exercise," said Major Willoughby suddenly,
fixing his eyes upon his hostess.

"Surely it--he--is too small to require a great deal," said Lady Vivian
languidly. Lap-dogs bored her very much indeed, and she turned away her
eyes after taking one rather disgusted look at the recumbent Puff
through her eyeglasses.

"Train up a dog in the way it should go. Now, this little fellah--you'd
hardly believe it, Lady Vivian, if I were to tell you the difference in
him after he's had a good run over the Common."

"Lewis!" cried Lesbia, opening her eyes to an incredible extent, as was
her wont whenever she wished to emphasize her words. "I _can't_ have you
boring people about Puff. Lewis is a perfect slave to Puffles, and tries
to hide it by calling him 'the dog' and talking about his training."

Lewis looked self-conscious, and immediately said: "Not at all; not at
all. But the dog is an intelligent little brute. Now, I'll tell you what
happened the other day."

Major Willoughby gave various instances of Puff's discrimination, and
Lesbia kissed the top of Puff's somnolent head and exclaimed shrilly at
intervals that "it was too, too bad to pay the little treasure so many
compliments; it would turn his little fluffy head, it would."

Lady Vivian reflected that she might certainly absolve herself from the
charge of contributing to this catastrophe. The language of compliment
had seldom been further from her lips; but in any case her visitors left
her little of the trouble of sustaining conversation.

It was evident that Puff was a recent acquisition in the Willoughby
_ménage_.

"Where's your dear girl?" Lesbia presently inquired fondly of her
hostess.

"In Questerham, at the Depôt."

"Now, Joanna, I'm going to be perfectly candid. You won't mind, I
know--after all, you and I were girls together. What Char needs, my
dear, is _flogging_."

Lady Vivian was conscious of distinct relief at the thought that her
secretary did not happen to be within earshot of this startling
expression of opinion.

"You are certainly being perfectly candid, Lesbia," she said dryly.
"What has poor Char been doing to require flogging, may I ask?"

"You ask me that, Joanna! Lewis, hark at her!"

Lewis, thus appealed to, looked very uncomfortable, and said in a
non-committal manner: "H'm, yes, yes. Hi! Puff!--good dog, sir!" thus
rousing the Pekinese to a fresh outburst of ear-piercing barks.

When this had at length been quelled by the blandishments of Lesbia and
the words of command repeatedly given in a martial tone by her husband,
Lady Vivian repeated her inquiry, and Mrs. Willoughby replied forcibly:
"My dear, nothing but flogging would ever bring her to her senses. The
way she's treating you and poor dear Sir Piers! He's looking iller and
older every day, and tells me himself that he never sees her now; it's
too piteous to hear him, dear old thing. It would wring tears from a
stone--wouldn't it, Lewis?"

"Down, sir, down, I say!" was the reply of Major Willoughby, addressed
to the investigating Puff.

"Oh, naughty boy, leave the screen alone. Now, come here to mother,
then. What was I telling you, Joanna? Oh, about that girl of yours.
War-work is all very well, my dear, but to _my_ mind home-ties are
absolutely sacred, and more than ever before in such a time as this,
when we may all be swept away by some ghastly air-raid in a night. It's
simply a time when homes should _cling_ together. I always tell my Lewis
it's a time when we should _cling_ more than ever before--don't I,
Lewis?"

Lewis looked at Puff with a compelling eye, but Puff was again
quiescent, and gave him no opening.

Lady Vivian said, very briskly indeed: "Char is not at all a clinging
person, Lesbia, and neither am I. We can each stand very comfortably on
our own feet, and I'm proud of the work she's doing in Questerham. Now,
do let me give you some tea."

"Joanna, I know perfectly well you're snubbing me and telling me to mind
my own business, but Lewis can tell you that I'm perfectly impervious. I
_always_ say exactly what I want to say, and if you won't listen to me,
I shall talk to your good man. I can hear him coming."

The entrance of Sir Piers Vivian was the signal for a frantic uproar
from Puff, who hurled a shrill defiance at him from the hearth-rug,
which he so exactly matched in colour as to be indistinguishable from
it.

"Bless me, Joanna, what's all this?" inquired the astonished Sir Piers,
looking all round him in search of the monster from which so much noise
could proceed.

He failed to perceive it, and stumbled heavily over the hearth-rug.

There was a howl from Puff; Lesbia cried, "Oh, my little manikin, is 'oo
deaded?" Major Willoughby exclaimed in agonized tones to his host, "By
Jove! the dog got in your way, sir, I'm afraid;" and to Puff, "Get out
of the light, sir; what are you doing there?" and Lady Vivian gave a
sudden irrepressible peal of laughter.

So that Lesbia, taking her departure half an hour later, remarked
conclusively to her Lewis that the strain of this dreadful war was
making poor dear Joanna Vivian positively hysterical.

She repeated the same alarming statement for Char's benefit next time
she saw her at the Canteen. "I shouldn't say it, my dear child, but that
your darling mother and I were girls together, and it's simply breaking
my heart to see how broken up your father is, and no one to take any of
the strain of it off _her_."

Mrs. Willoughby spoke in her usual penetrating accents, and without any
regard for the fact that at least three members of Miss Vivian's staff
were well within earshot.

"No one can be keener than I am about doing one's bit for this ghastly
war, but I do think, dear, that your place just now is at home--at least
part of each day. You won't mind an old friend's speaking quite, quite
plainly, I know."

Char minded so much that she was white with annoyance.

"I can't discuss it here," she said, in a voice even lower than usual,
in rebukeful contrast to Lesbia's screeching tones. "I should be only
too thankful if I could get my place satisfactorily filled here, but at
present it's perfectly impossible for me to leave even for an hour or
two. I very often don't get time even for lunch nowadays."

"Simply because you enjoy making a martyr of yourself!" said Mrs.
Willoughby spitefully.

Char, dropping her eyelids in a manner that gave her a look of
incredible insolence, moved away without replying.

For the next week she worked harder than ever, multiplying letters and
incessant interviews, and depriving herself daily of an extra hour's
sleep in the morning by starting for the Depôt earlier than usual, so as
to cope with the press of business. It was her justification to herself
for Mrs. Willoughby's crude accusations and the unspoken reproach in Sir
Piers's feeble bewilderment at her activities.

Miss Plumtree fell ill with influenza, and Char took over her work, and
arranged with infinite trouble to herself that Miss Plumtree should go
to a small convalescent home in the country, because the doctor said she
needed change of air. She was to incur no expense, Char told her, very
kindly, and even remembered to order a cab for her at the country
station. Miss Plumtree, owning that she could never have afforded a
journey to her home in Devonshire, cried tears of mingled weakness and
gratitude, and told the Hostel all that Miss Vivian had done.

Everybody said it was exactly like Miss Vivian, and that she really was
too wonderful.

Then the demon of influenza began its yearly depredations. One member of
the staff after another went down with it, was obliged to plead illness
and go to bed at the Hostel, and inevitably pass on the complaint to her
room-mate.

"I'm afraid Mrs. Potter won't be coming today," Miss Delmege announced
deprecatingly to her chief, who struck the table with her hand and
exclaimed despairingly:

"Of course! just because there's more to be done than ever! Influenza, I
suppose?"

"I'm afraid it is."

"That's five of them down with it now--or is it six? I don't know _what_
to do."

"It does seem strange," was the helpless rejoinder of Miss Vivian's
secretary.

Char thought the adjective inadequate to a degree. She abated not one
jot of all that she had undertaken, and accomplished the work of six
people.

Miss Delmege several times ventured to exclaim, with a sort of
respectful despair, that Miss Vivian would kill herself, and Char knew
that the rest of the staff was saying much the same thing behind her
back. At Plessing Miss Bruce remonstrated admiringly, and exclaimed
every day how tired Char was looking, throwing at the same time a rather
resentful glance upon Lady Vivian.

But Joanna remained quite unperceiving of the dark lines deepening daily
beneath her daughter's heavy eyes.

She was entirely absorbed in Sir Piers, becoming daily more dependent
upon her.

The day came, when the influenza epidemic was at its height in
Questerham, when Miss Bruce exclaimed in tones of scarcely suppressed
indignation as Char came downstairs after the usual hasty breakfast
which she had in her own room: "My dear, you're not fit to go. Really
you're not; you ought to be in bed this moment. Do, do let me telephone
and say you can't come today. Indeed, it isn't right. You look as though
you hadn't slept all night."

"I haven't, much," said Char hoarsely. "I have a cold, that's all."

"Miss Vivian was coughing half the night," thrust in her maid, hovering
in the hall laden with wraps.

"You mustn't go!" cried Miss Bruce distractedly.

"You really aren't fit, Miss."

Lady Vivian appeared at the head of the stairs.

"What's all this?"

"Oh, Lady Vivian," cried the secretary, "do look at her! She ought to be
in bed."

Char said: "Nonsense!" impatiently, but she gave her mother an
opportunity for seeing that her face was white and drawn, with heavily
ringed eyes and feverish lips.

"You've got influenza, Char."

"I dare say," said Char in tones of indifference. "It would be very odd
if I'd escaped, since half the office is down with it. But I can't
afford to give in."

"It would surely be truer economy to take a day off now than to risk a
real breakdown later on," was the time-worn argument urged by Miss
Bruce.

Char smiled with pale decision.

"Let me pass, Brucey. I really mean it."

"Lady Vivian!" wailed the secretary.

Joanna shrugged her shoulders. She, too, looked weary.

"Be reasonable, Char."

"It's of no use, mother. I shouldn't dream of giving in while there's
work to be done."

Miss Bruce gave a sort of groan of mingled admiration and despair at
this heroic statement. Char slipped her arms into the fur coat that her
maid was holding out for her.

Lady Vivian stood at the top of the stairs looking at her with an air of
detached consideration, and left Miss Bruce to make those hurried
dispositions of foot-warmer, fur rug, and little bottles of sulphate and
quinine which, the secretary resentfully felt, a more maternal woman
would have taken upon herself.

But Lady Vivian's omissions were not destined to provide the only one,
or even the most severe, of the shocks received by Miss Bruce's
sensibilities that morning.

As Char extended her hand for the last of Miss Bruce's offerings, a
small green bottle of highly pungent smelling salts, Lady Vivian's
incisive tones came levelly from above.

"You'd better stay the night at Questerham, Char. It will be very cold
driving back after dark."

"Oh no, mother. Besides, I don't know where I could go. I hate the
hotel, and one can't inflict an influenza cold on other people."

"You can go to your Hostel. Surely there's a spare bed?"

The ghost of a smile flickered upon Lady Vivian's face, as though in
mischievous anticipation of Char's refusal.

"It's quite out of the question. The Hostel is for my staff, and it
would be very unsuitable for me, as Director of the Midland Supply
Depôt, to go there too."

"Bless me! are they as exclusive as all that?" exclaimed Joanna
flippantly. "Well, do as you like, but if you come back here, you're not
to go near your father, with a cold like that."

Miss Bruce, almost before she knew it, found herself exchanging a glance
of indignation with Char's maid, but she was conscious enough of her own
dignity to look away again in a great hurry.

"You will certainly want to go straight to bed when you come in," she
said to Char, pointedly enough. "We will have everything ready and a
nice fire in your room."

"Thank you, Brucey."

Char bestowed her rare smile upon the little agitated secretary, and
moved across the hall.

She felt very ill, with violent pains in her head and back, and shivered
intermittently.

Leaning back in her heavy coat, under the fur rug, Char closed her eyes.
She reflected on the dismay with which Miss Delmege would greet her,
and wondered rather grimly whether any further members of her staff
would have succumbed to the prevailing illness. She knew that only a
will of iron could surmount such physical ills as she was herself
enduring, and dreaded the moment when she must rouse herself from her
present torpid discomfort to the necessity of moving and speaking.

As she got out of the car, Char reeled and almost fell, in an
intolerable spasm of giddiness, and her progress up the stairs was only
made possible by the remnant of strength which allowed her to grasp the
baluster and lean her full weight upon it as she dragged herself into
her office.

She was, however, met with no wail of condolence from the genteel
accents of Miss Delmege.

Grace Jones, composedly solid and healthy-looking, said placidly:
"Good-morning. I'm sorry to say that Miss Delmege is in bed with
influenza."

"In bed!"

"She had a very restless night and has a temperature this morning."

"She was all right yesterday."

"She had a sore throat, you know," remarked Grace, "but she didn't at
all want to give in, and is very much distressed."

Char raised her heavy eyes.

"You all seem to me to collapse like a pack of cards, one after another.
I think _my_ bed would prove a bed of thorns while there's so much work
to do, and so few people to do it. In fact, I can't imagine wanting to
go there."

She made an infinitesimal pause, shaken by one of those violent,
involuntary, shivering fits. Miss Jones gazed at her chief.

"I think I can manage Miss Delmege's work," she observed gently.

"Oh, I shall have to go through most of it myself, of course," was the
ungrateful retort of the suffering Miss Vivian.

The day appeared to her interminable. The air was damp and raw; and
although Miss Jones piled coal upon the fire, it refused to blaze up,
and only smouldered in a sullen heap, with a small curling column of
yellow smoke at the top. A traction-engine ground and screamed and
pounded its way up and down under the window, and each time it passed
directly in front of the house the floor and walls of Char's room shook
slightly, with a vibration that made her feel sick and giddy.

There were no interviews, but letters and telephone messages poured in
incessantly, and at about twelve o'clock a telegram marked "Priority"
was brought her. With a sinking sense of utter dismay, Char tore it
open.

"A rest-station for a troop-train at five o'clock this afternoon. Eight
hundred. Miss Jones, please let the Commissariat Department know at
once. The staff should be at the station by three. I'll make out the
list at once, and you can take it round the office."

By four o'clock a fine cold rain was falling, and Char's voice had
nearly gone.

As she hurried down to her car, which was to take her to the station,
she heard an incautiously raised voice: "She does look so ill! Of course
it's flu, and I should think this rest-station will just about finish
her off."

"Not she! I do believe she'd stick it out if she were dying. No lunch
today, either, only a cup of Bovril, which I simply had to force her to
take."

Char recognized the voice of Miss Henderson, who had received her order
for lunch in place of Miss Delmege, and had ventured to suggest the
Bovril in tones of the utmost deference.

She smiled slightly.

The troop-train was late.

"Of course!" muttered Char, pacing up and down the sheltered platform
with the fur collar of her motoring coat turned up, and her hands deep
in its wide pockets.

In the waiting-rooms, given over to the workers for the time being, the
staff was active.

Sandwiches were cut, and heavy trays and urns carried out in readiness,
while orderlies from the hospitals put up light trestle tables at
intervals along the platform.

Char paused, turned the handle of the waiting-room door, and stood for a
moment on the threshold.

Every one was talking. Trays piled with cut and stacked sandwiches were
ranged all round the room; tin mugs, again on trays, stood in groups of
twelve; and the final spoonfuls of sugar were being scooped from a tin
biscuit-box into the waiting bowl on each tray. Even the cake was
already cut, sliced up on innumerable plates.

They had been working hard, and had more work to come, yet they all
looked gay and amused, and were talking and laughing as though they did
not know the meaning of fatigue. And Char was feeling so ill that she
could hardly stand.

Suddenly some one caught sight of her, there was a sort of murmur, "Miss
Vivian!" and in one moment self-consciousness invaded the room. Those
who were sitting down stood up, trying to look at ease; little Miss
Anthony, who had been manipulating the bread-cutting machine with great
success all the afternoon, at once cut her finger with it, and some one
else suddenly dropped a mug with a reverberating clatter.

"Miss Cox!"

She sprang forward nervously.

"Yes, Miss Vivian?"

"How many sandwiches have you got ready?"

"Sixteen hundred, Miss Vivian. That'll be two for each man, and they're
very large."

"Cut another hundred, for reserve."

"Yes, Miss Vivian."

They began to work again, this time speaking almost in whispers.

Char turned away.

Her personality, as usual, had had its effect.

Nearly twenty minutes later the station-master came up to her on the
platform.

"She'll be in directly now, Miss Vivian. Just signalled."

Char wheeled smartly back to the waiting-room and gave the word of
command.

Within five minutes the urns and trays were all in place on the tables,
and each worker was at her appointed stand. Char had indicated
beforehand, as she always did, the exact duties of each one.

"That's a smart bit of work," the station-master remarked admiringly.

"Ah, well, you see, I've been at the job some time now," said Miss
Vivian, pleased. She never pretended to look upon her staff as anything
but a collection of pawns, to be placed or disposed of by a master hand.

And it was part of that strength of personality that lay at the back of
all her powers of organization, which had given the majority of her
staff exactly the same impression as her own of their relative positions
with regard to the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.




VIII


Char moved up and down the length of the train.

She never carried any of the laden trays herself, but she saw to it that
no man missed his mug of steaming tea and supply of sandwiches and cake,
and she exerted all the affability and charm of which she held the
secret, in talking to the soldiers. The packets of cigarettes with which
she was always laden added to her popularity, and when the train steamed
slowly out of the station again the men raised a cheer.

"Three cheers for Miss Vivian!"

Her name had passed like lightning from one carriage to another.

"Hooray-ay."

They hung out of the window, waving their caps, and Char stood at the
end of the platform, heedless of the rain now pouring down on her, and
waved until the train was out of sight.

"Start washing up and packing the things at once."

"Yes, Miss Vivian."

The waiting-room was already seething and full of steam from the zinc
pans of boiling water into which mugs and knives were being flung with
deafening clatter.

"Here, chuck me a dry cloth! Mine's wringing."

"Oh, look out, dear! You're splashing your uniform like anything."

"I've got such a lot of work waiting for me when I get back to the
office."

"Poor fellows, they did look bad! Did you see one chap, quite a young
fellow, too, with his poor leg and all...."

Char turned away impatiently.

Thank Heaven, there was nothing further for her to do at the station.

The work at the office would be heavy enough, but at least she had not
to stand amongst that noisy crew of workers round the big packing-cases
and wash-tubs, each one screaming so as to make herself heard above the
splashing water and clattered crockery.

It did not occur to her, as the car took her swiftly back to the office,
also to be thankful that neither had she to walk back, as they had, in
the streaming rain and cold of the dark evening.

She swallowed one of Miss Bruce's quinine tablets with her hot tea, but
was unable to eat anything, and sat over her letters with throbbing
temples and a temperature that she felt to be rising rapidly. She pored
over each simplest sentence again and again, unable to attach any
meaning to the words dancing before her aching, swimming eyes.

Soon after half-past six Grace Jones came back from the station, her
pale face glowing from the wind and rain, unabated vigour in her
movements.

"Have you only just got back?"

"I had some tea downstairs. I've been in about ten minutes."

Char raised her eyebrows with an expression that would have caused Miss
Delmege ostentatiously to refrain from tea every day for a week, had it
been directed towards herself.

But Miss Jones only said tranquilly: "Is there anything that I can do
for you?"

"No. Yes. You can answer that telephone."

The bell had suddenly sounded, and Char felt no strength to exert the
swollen, aching muscles of her throat.

Grace took up the receiver.

"They want to speak to you from Plessing."

Char checked an exclamation of impatience. If only Brucey wouldn't
_fuss_ so! She might know by this time that it was of no use.

"Please say that I can't take a private call from here. Ask if it's on
business."

She waited impatiently.

"It's not on business--it's important. Lady Vivian is speaking."

Char almost snatched the receiver.

"What is it?" she asked curtly.

"Is that you, Char?" came over the wires.

"Miss Vivian speaking," returned Char officially, for the benefit of
Miss Jones.

"Your father is ill. He has had a very slight stroke, and I want you to
bring out Dr. Prince in the car."

"How bad is he? Have you had any one?"

"Yes. Dr. Clark came up from the village, but he suggested sending for
Dr. Prince at once. He is unconscious, of course, and there isn't any
immediate danger; he may get over it altogether, but--this is the first
minute I've had--I am going back to him now. Come as soon as you can,
Char, and bring the doctor. I can't get him on the telephone, but you
must get hold of him somehow."

"Yes--yes. Is there anything else?"

"Nothing now, my dear. By great good luck John is here, and most
helpful. He carried your father upstairs. Only don't delay, will you?"

"No. I'll come at once. Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

Char replaced the receiver, feeling dazed.

Involuntarily her first sensation was one of injury that any one should
be more ill than she was herself, and able to excite so much stir.

The next moment she regained possession of herself.

"Miss Jones, ring up the garage and tell them to send my car round
immediately. Sir Piers Vivian has been taken ill, and I am going out to
Plessing at once. Tell them to hurry."

Grace obeyed, and Char began feverishly to make order amongst the pile
of papers on her table.

"I'm leaving a lot undone," she muttered, "but I suppose I shall be here
tomorrow morning. I must be."

Ten minutes later the car was at the door.

"Miss Jones, see that all _these_ go tonight," Char rapidly instructed
her secretary. "The letters I haven't been able to sign must be held
over till tomorrow. By the way, didn't the--er--your Hostel
Superintendent say that she wanted an appointment with me this evening?"

"Mrs. Bullivant? Yes. She was coming at eight."

"Then, please tell her what's happened, and say that I will arrange to
see her some time tomorrow. That's all, I think."

"I hope Sir Piers Vivian will be better by the time you get back."

"I hope so. Thank you. Good-night, Miss Jones."

Char hurried downstairs, hoping that the tone of her voice had put Miss
Jones into her proper place again. She did not encourage personal
amenities between herself and her staff.

It was nearly nine o'clock before she got to Plessing. It had taken a
long while to find Dr. Prince, and the chauffeur drove with maddening
precautions through a thick wet mist along the sodden, slippery roads.

"A broken leg or two would delay us worse," said the doctor
philosophically.

He was a bearded, hard-working man, with a reputation that extended
beyond the Midlands.

After finding out from Char that she knew little or nothing of her
father's state of health, he asked her with a quick look: "And yourself,
Miss Charmian? You look rather washed out."

Char gave a short, hoarse cough, semi-involuntary, at this unflattering
description.

"I'm afraid I'm in the midst of an influenza attack. My staff have all
been down with it, more or less. However, I can't afford to give way to
that sort of thing now; there's far too much work to be done."

"You ought to take six months' holiday," said the doctor decidedly, and
relapsed into silence.

Char wondered if he were meditating an appeal to her. It must outrage
his professional instincts to see any one looking as she did still upon
her feet. The doctor, however, who had been up since two o'clock that
morning, was merely trying to snatch some sleep.

He had known Char Vivian all her life, and had no thought whatever of
wasting appeals upon her.

At Plessing, Trevellyan met them in the hall.

"Good-evening, Char," he greeted her. "Sir Piers is much the same. Not
conscious. Will you go up, doctor? They'll have some dinner ready by the
time you come down. I'm afraid you've had a cold drive."

"Freezing," answered Char, with a violent shiver.

"Better go to bed," said the doctor, without looking at her, as he went
upstairs.

Char, still in her fur coat, hung over the fire.

"Tell me what's happened, Johnnie."

"Cousin Joanna says that he was very restless and low-spirited last
night--talked about the war, you know, and this last air-raid. And when
he came down this morning he suddenly turned giddy and fell across the
hall sofa. Luckily it wasn't on the floor. Cousin Joanna was with him,
and they got him flat on the sofa, and sent for Clark. I got here about
the same time as he did, by pure chance--came over for a day's shooting,
you know--and between us we carried him upstairs. By Jove! he's no light
weight for a man of his years, either."

"What does Dr. Clark think?"

"That he'll probably recover consciousness in a day or two. But even
then--don't be frightened, Char; it's only what generally happens in
these cases--his--his words probably won't come quite right, you know.
He may speak, but not quite normally."

Char smiled a little at her cousin's look of anxious solicitude for the
effect of his surmises upon her.

"I'm not without hospital experience, you know," she said gently. "It's
the left side of the brain, then? Is his right side paralyzed?"

"I'm afraid so--arm and hand, you know. We shall see what Prince says."

There was a pause, and Char said hoarsely: "I wonder if I ought to go
up?"

"Is that you, Miss Vivian?" came the voice of Miss Bruce from the
stairs.

Char turned and went slowly up to her.

Trevellyan did not see her again that evening, and Miss Bruce told him
later, with rather a reproachful look, that poor Miss Vivian was not fit
to be up.

"It was a shock to her, I'm afraid."

"Yes--oh yes; but she really was dreadfully ill when she went out this
morning. She ought never, never to have been allowed to leave the
house."

"You don't mean to say she's going to be ill too?" exclaimed Trevellyan
in tones of dismay.

He was thinking that Joanna had enough anxiety as it was; but Miss Bruce
attributed his tones entirely to concern on behalf of her adored Miss
Vivian, and looked at him more amiably.

"I'm afraid it's influenza, but a couple of days in bed will make all
the difference, and now that, of course, there's no question of her
leaving the house, she'll be able to take care of herself for once."

"There she is," said Captain Trevellyan, and strode across the hall to
meet his Cousin Joanna and the doctor.

Miss Bruce waited to hear Dr. Prince's verdict, and then went quietly up
to Char's room, with offers of service that aroused the unconcealed
wrath of Char's devoted maid.

"I don't want anything," Miss Vivian declared wearily. "As soon as I
know whether I may see father, I can go to bed--or go up to him, as the
case may be. But I suppose my mother means to come down to me some
time?"

There was more than a hint of resentment in her wearied voice.

"Shall I tell her ladyship you're here, miss?" asked the maid gently.

"She knows it," said Char shortly. "I brought Dr. Prince."

The zealous Miss Bruce slipped silently from the room and down into the
hall again.

Lady Vivian, oblivious of her daughter's claims, was discussing Dr.
Prince's verdict in lowered tones with Captain Trevellyan.

Miss Bruce felt a sort of melancholy triumph in beholding this
justification for Char's obvious sense of injury.

"Miss Vivian is in her room, and waiting for you most anxiously," she
said reproachfully. "She thought you were still with Sir Piers. She
won't go to bed until she knows whether she may see him."

"Poor child, it wouldn't do her any good to see him," said Joanna.
"There's no sign of returning consciousness yet, though Dr. Prince
thinks he may come to himself almost any time, and then everything
depends upon his being kept absolutely quiet. But I'll go up to Char."

She went upstairs, but came down again much sooner than Miss Bruce
approved.

"I've told her to go to bed," she placidly informed the secretary. "She
can't do anything, and she looks very tired."

"She is far from well, I'm afraid," stiffly remarked Miss Bruce.

"Well, I leave her to you, Miss Bruce. I know you'll take the most
devoted care of her. Let her sleep as long as she can in the morning."

"Cousin Joanna, is there anything I can do?" asked Trevellyan wistfully.

"I don't think so, Johnnie. You'll come round tomorrow?"

She was smiling at him quite naturally.

"The first thing. You're sure there's nothing I can do tonight--sit up
with him, or anything?"

"My maid and I are going to do it between us. We shall have a nurse down
from London by midday tomorrow, I hope."

"Let me sit up instead of you."

She smiled again.

"Certainly not. I'm only going to take the first half of the night--much
the easiest. Then I shall probably go to sleep, unless there's any
change, when, of course, they'll fetch me. But Dr. Prince doesn't think
there will be yet, and I shall take all the rest I can. I'm much more
likely to be wanted at night later on."

Miss Bruce went upstairs again, much more nearly disposed to wonder at
such reasonableness than to admire it.

Her ideals were early Victorian ones, and although she knew that she
could not hope for hysterics from Lady Vivian, she would have much
preferred at least to hear her declare that sleep would be utterly
impossible to her, and that she should spend the night hovering between
her unconscious husband and her prostrate daughter.

But Lady Vivian went to bed at half-past twelve, and did not even insist
upon merely lying down in her dressing-gown, nor did she reappear in Sir
Piers's room until eight o'clock on the following morning.

There had been no change during the night.

Char slept heavily until ten o'clock, then woke and rang her bell rather
indignantly.

Miss Bruce, who had been hovering about anxiously since seven that
morning, appeared instantly at the door.

"There is no change whatever, my dear. Now, do, do lie down again and
keep warm. There is nothing that you can do."

Char complied rather sullenly. She was still feeling ill, and violently
resented her own involuntary physical relief at this enforced inaction.

"What on earth will happen at the office?" she muttered. "Have you told
them that I'm not coming?"

"I telephoned myself," said Miss Bruce proudly.

"What did you say?"

"That you were in bed yourself with influenza, and quite unfit to move;
and also that we are in great anxiety about Sir Piers."

"That's the only reason I can't go in to Questerham as usual," said Char
coldly. "It was quite unnecessary to mention my having influenza,
Brucey. That would never constitute a reason for my staying away from my
work."

Miss Bruce looked very much crestfallen.

"You'd better telephone again, please, a little later on, with a message
from me. Say that I must be rung up without fail when my secretary has
gone through the letters, and I'll come to the telephone and speak to
her myself."

"The draughty hall!" moaned Miss Bruce, but she dared not offer any
further remonstrance.

Char's conversation on the telephone with Miss Jones was a lengthy one,
and Miss Bruce, wandering in the background in search of imaginary
currents of air, listened to her concluding observations with almost
ludicrous dismay. "The departments must carry on as usual, of course,
but don't hesitate to ring me up in any emergency. And no letters had
better leave the office tonight--in fact, they can't, since there'll be
nobody to sign them. What's that?... No, certainly not. How on earth
could I depute such a responsibility to any one in the office. I shall
have made some arrangement by tomorrow. Sir Piers may remain in this
state indefinitely, and I can't have the whole of the work held up in
this way.... That's all. Remember, nothing is to leave the office for
the present. You can ring me up and report on the day's work at seven
o'clock this evening. Good-bye."

As Char replaced the receiver, her mother entered the hall. They had
already exchanged a few words earlier in the morning, and Lady Vivian
only remarked dispassionately: "I thought you were in bed. By the way,
Char, I'm sorry, but we shall have to have the telephone disconnected.
The house _must_ be kept quiet, and that bell can be heard quite plainly
from upstairs. We can ring other people up, but they won't be able to
get at us. Did you want to talk to your office?"

"I _must_," said Char. "Things are absolutely hung up there; no one who
can even sign a letter."

"Why not? Have they all got writer's cramp all of a sudden?"

Char, never very graciously disposed towards her parent's many small
fleers at her official dignity, thought this one particularly ill-timed,
and received it by a silence which said as much.

Lady Vivian looked at her, and said rather penitently: "Well, well, I
mustn't keep you here when you ought to be in bed. My dear child, do you
mean to say you're wearing nothing but your dressing-gown under that
coat? Do go upstairs again."

"I want to speak to you, mother."

"I'll come up in five minutes. I'm going to give an order to the
stables."

Lady Vivian walked briskly down the drive, her uncovered head thrown
back to catch the chilly gleams of winter sunlight.

There were dark lines under her blue eyes, but the voice in which she
gave her orders was full and serene as usual, even when she answered the
chauffeur's respectful inquiries by the news that Sir Piers still
remained unconscious.

Five minutes later Lady Vivian's secretary had the gratification of
seeing her enter Char's bedroom and establish herself on a chair at the
sufferer's bedside.

That afternoon Miss Bruce received a further satisfaction when Lady
Vivian sought her in consultation.

"It's about Char, Miss Bruce. She's fretting herself into fiddlestrings
about that office of hers. She thinks all the work is more or less held
up while she's not there to see to it. And yet she may be kept here
indefinitely. It's quite possible that Sir Piers may ask for her when he
comes to himself again, so there can be no question of her going in to
Questerham at present, even if she were fit for it, which she most
decidedly isn't."

"_That_ consideration by itself would never keep her from her work,"
said Miss Bruce loyally.

Lady Vivian waived the point.

"Well, as she won't do the only sensible thing, and transfer her
authority to some responsible member of the staff, she'd better have one
of them out here every day to go through the work with her and take back
the instructions. The car is bound to be going in at least once a day."

"It won't be the rest for Charmian that one had hoped," said the
secretary dismally.

"But it will be better for her to do a little work than just to sit and
worry about her father and the office--though, upon my word," said Lady
Vivian warmly, "I think she's a great deal more anxious about the Depôt
than about his illness."

Miss Bruce, not inconceivably, thought so too, but she was very much
shocked at hearing such an idea put into words, and said firmly: "Then,
would you like me to write to Questerham and tell Miss Vivian's
secretary that it has been arranged for her to come out here daily for
the present?"

"Dear me, you're as bad as Char, Miss Bruce. Anybody would think they
were all machines, to be dragged about without any will of their own.
No, no! Ring up the office and get hold of the secretary, and give her a
polite message, asking if she can manage it, if we send her in and out
in the car."

Miss Bruce obeyed, and triumphantly told her employer that evening that
all was arranged, and Miss Jones would come to Plessing on the following
morning to receive Miss Vivian's directions.

"Miss Jones? You don't mean to say that the genteel Delmege has
abdicated in favour of Miss Jones? What a piece of luck for us!" cried
Lady Vivian.

"Miss Delmege is in bed with influenza."

"Excellent!" said Joanna callously. "I shall be delighted to see Miss
Jones. I wanted to ask her here, but Char nearly had a fit at the idea.
She'll certainly think I've done it out of _malice prepense_, as it is.
She's got a most pigheaded prejudice against that nice Miss Jones."

"Lady Vivian!"

Lady Vivian laughed.

"You'll have to break it to her, Miss Bruce, that it's Miss Jones who is
coming. And don't let her think I did it on purpose!"

"I am sure she would never think anything of the sort."

"Perhaps not. But Char does get very odd ideas into her head, when she
thinks there's any risk of _lèse-majesté_ to her Directorship. I must
say," observed Joanna thoughtfully, preparing to go upstairs for her
night watch, "I often wish that when Char was younger I'd smacked some
of the nonsense out--"

But before this well-worn aspiration of Miss Vivian's parent, Miss Bruce
took her indignant departure.




IX


"Rather strange, isn't it?" said Miss Delmege in tones of weak
despondency. "If it hadn't been for this wretched flu, _I_ should have
been going out to Plessing every day with the work, I suppose, as Gracie
is doing now."

"Yes, I suppose you would," agreed Miss Henderson blankly.

She sat on the foot of the bed, which was surrounded by a perfect
wilderness of screens.

Miss Delmege reclined against two pillows, screwed against her back at
an uncomfortable-looking angle. The room was not warmed, and the invalid
wore a small flannel dressing-jacket, rather soiled and very much
crumpled, a loosely knitted woolly jersey of dingy appearance and an
ugly mustard colour, and over everything else an old quilted pink
dressing-gown, with a cotton-wool-like substance bursting from the cuffs
and elbows. Her hair was pinned up carelessly, and her expression was a
much dejected one.

Miss Henderson was knitting in a spasmodic way, and stopping every now
and then to blow her nose violently. She had several times during the
afternoon ejaculated vehemently that a cold wasn't flu, she was thankful
to say.

"It's probably the beginning of it, though," Miss Delmege replied
pessimistically.

"You're hipped, Delmege, that's what you are--regularly hipped. Now,
don't you think it would do you good to come downstairs for tea? There's
a fire in the sitting-room."

"Well, I don't mind if I do. It'll seem quite peculiar to be downstairs
again. Fancy, I've been up here five whole days! And I'm really not a
person to give way, as a rule. At least, not so far as I know, I'm not."

"It's nearly four now. Look here, I'll put a kettle on, and you can have
some hot water."

"Thanks, dear," said Miss Delmege graciously, "but don't bother. My
hot-water bottle is still quite warm. I can use that."

"All right, then, I'll leave you. Ta-ta! You'll find me in the
sitting-room. Sure you don't want any help?"

"No, thanks. I shall be quite all right. I only hope you won't be in bed
yourself tomorrow, dear."

"No fear!" defiantly said Miss Henderson, at the same time sneezing
loudly.

She went away before Miss Delmege had time to utter any further
prognostications.

In the sitting-room she busied herself in pushing a creaking wicker
arm-chair close to the fire--which for once was a roaring one, owing to
the now convalescent Mrs. Potter, who had been crouching over it with a
novel all day--lit the gas, and turned it up until it flared upwards
with a steady, hissing noise; said "Excuse me; do you mind?" to Mrs.
Potter; shut down the small crack of open window, and drew the curtains.

"Delmege is coming down, and we'd better have the room warm," she
explained. "She's just out of bed."

By the time Miss Delmege, now wearing her mustard-coloured jersey over a
thick stuff dress, had tottered downstairs, the room was indeed warm.

"Now, this," said Mrs. Bullivant cheerfully, when she came in to see how
many of her charges wanted tea--"now this is what I call really cosy."

She looked ill, and very tired, herself. The general servant had given
notice because of the number of trays that she had been required to
carry upstairs of late, and had left the day before, and the cook was
disobliging and would do nothing beyond her own immediate duties. Mrs.
Bullivant was very much afraid of her, and did most of the work herself.

She had written to the Depôt in accordance with the official Hostel
regulations, stating that a servant was required there for general
housework; but no answer had come authorizing her to engage one, and
Miss Marsh had explained to her that in Miss Vivian's absence such
trifling questions must naturally expect to be overlooked or set aside
for the time being. So little Mrs. Bullivant staggered up from the
basement bearing a tray that seemed very large and heavy, and put it on
the table in the sitting-room, very close to the fire, with a triumphant
gasp.

"There! and it's a beautiful fire for toast. None of the munition girls
are coming in for tea, are they?"

"Hope not," said Miss Henderson briefly. "I _ought_ to be at the office
now. I said I'd be back at five, but I shouldn't have had the afternoon
off at all if Miss Vivian had been there."

Miss Delmege drew herself up. "Miss Vivian never refuses a reasonable
amount of leave, that I'm aware of," she said stiffly.

"Oh, I mean we're slacker without her. There's less to do, that's all."

"Well, Grace Jones will be back presently, and I suppose she'll have
work for all of us, as usual. I wonder how Miss Vivian is," said Mrs.
Potter.

"And her father."

"Grace will be able to tell us," said Miss Delmege, not without a tinge
of acrimony in her voice. "It does seem so quaint, her going to and from
Plessing in Miss Vivian's car, like this, every day. It somehow makes me
howl with laughter."

She gave a faint, embittered snigger, and Miss Henderson and Mrs. Potter
exchanged glances.

"I hear the car now," said Mrs. Bullivant. "She'll be cold. I'll get
another cup, and give her some tea before she goes over to the office. I
do hope she's got Miss Vivian's authority for me to find a new servant."

They heard her outside in the hall, making inquiry, and Grace's voice
answering in tones of congratulation.

"Yes, it's quite all right. I asked Miss Vivian most particularly, and
told her what a lot of work there was, and she said, Get some one as
soon as you could. I came here before going to the office so as to tell
you at once."

"Well, that _was_ nice of you, dear, and now you shall have a nice cup
of hot tea before you go out again. Just a minute."

"I'll fetch it, Mrs. Bullivant. Don't you bother."

"It's all right, dear, only a cup and saucer wanted; the rest is all
ready."

In a few minutes Grace came into the sitting-room carefully carrying the
cup and saucer.

When she saw Miss Delmege she said in a pleased way: "Oh, I'm so glad
you're better. Miss Vivian asked after you. She was up herself this
afternoon, and looking much better."

"And how's her father?"

"They are much happier about him since he recovered consciousness. He
can talk almost quite well, and Dr. Prince is quite satisfied about him.
And they've got a nurse at last. You know, they couldn't get one for
love or money; none of the London places had any to spare."

"I should have thought they could get one from one of the Questerham
hospitals."

"I think Lady Vivian meant to, if everything else failed, but Miss
Vivian didn't think it a very good plan; she was afraid the hospitals
couldn't spare any one, I suppose, and, anyhow, most of the people there
are only V.A.D.'s."

"And is there any hope of seeing her back at the office?" asked Mrs.
Potter, rather faintly.

"I don't know," replied Grace thoughtfully. "You see, poor Sir Piers may
remain at this stage indefinitely, or may have another stroke any time.
They don't really know...."

"And Miss Vivian goes on with the work just the same!" ejaculated Miss
Henderson. "She really is a marvel."

"I'm sure she'd come to the office if it wasn't for poor Lady Vivian,"
said Miss Delmege. "But I know her mother depends on her altogether. I
don't suppose she could leave her, not as things are now."

Miss Delmege's assumption of an intimate and superior knowledge of the
_ménage_ at Plessing was received in silence. Miss Henderson, indeed,
glancing sharply at Grace, saw the merest quiver of surprise pass across
her face at the assertion; but reflected charitably that, after all,
Delmege had had a pretty sharp go of flu, and probably wasn't feeling up
to the mark yet. Her mis-statements, however irritating, had better be
left unchallenged.

"Do you ever see anything of Lady Vivian when you're at Plessing?" Miss
Delmege inquired benevolently of Grace, but the benevolence faded from
her expression when Miss Jones replied, with more enthusiasm than usual
in her voice, that she always had lunch with Lady Vivian, and sometimes
went round the garden with her before going up to Miss Vivian's room for
the afternoon's work.

"Dear me! I shouldn't have thought she'd have much time for going round
the garden. But she's not thoroughgoing, like Miss Vivian is, of course.
It's quite a different sort of nature, I fancy. Strange, too, being
mother and daughter."

Miss Henderson decided rapidly within herself that, influenza or no,
Delmege was making herself unbearable.

"You're getting tired with sitting up, aren't you, dear?" she inquired
crisply.

There was a moment's silence, and then Miss Delmege said in pinched
accents: "Who is it you're referring to, dear? Me, by any chance?"

Grace knew the state of tension to which those aloof and refined tones
were the prelude, and exclaimed hurriedly that she must go.

She did not want to hear Miss Henderson and Miss Delmege having "words,"
or to listen while Miss Delmege talked with genteel familiarity of Sir
Piers and Lady Vivian.

Pulling on her thick uniform coat, she went out, and slowly crossed the
street.

She was thinking of Lady Vivian, who had roused in her an enthusiasm
which she could never feel for Char, and who had talked to her so
frankly and warmly, as though to a contemporary, that afternoon in the
garden at Plessing. For all her quality of matter-of-factness, there was
a certain humble-mindedness about Miss Jones, which made it a matter of
surprise to her when she found herself on the borders of friendship with
the woman whom she thought so courageous and so lovable.

She hoped that Miss Vivian would require her to go out to Plessing every
day for a long while; then reflected that the privilege rightly belonged
to Miss Delmege, who would certainly avail herself of it at the earliest
possible moment.

She knew, and calmly accepted, that Miss Delmege's services would
certainly be preferred to her own by the Director of the Midland Supply
Depôt; but she did not think that Lady Vivian proffered her liking or
her confidence lightly, and felt a certain placid security that their
unofficial intercourse would somehow or other continue. Then, with
characteristic thoroughness, she dismissed the question from her mind
and went into the office and to her work.

That evening Grace went to the Canteen. Only Miss Marsh, Miss Anthony,
and Miss Henderson accompanied her.

"We shall have to work like blacks to make up for the absentees,"
groaned Tony.

"Never mind; it isn't quite so cold tonight. Isn't the moon nice?"

"Lovely. Just the night for Zeppelins."

Miss Henderson spoke from the pessimism of approaching influenza, but it
happened that she was right. The first air raid over Questerham took
place that night.

The work was rapidly lessening towards eleven o'clock, when Captain
Trevellyan came into the hall. He stood for an instant gazing round him
reflectively, then said to Grace: "Who is in command here?"

"Mrs. Willoughby, when Miss Vivian isn't here."

"I see, thank you."

Looking very doubtful, he sought Lesbia, who was preparing to discard
her overall and to take her departure with the Pekinese.

"Johnnie! How _too_ sweet of you to turn up just in time to see me home!
My Lewis hates my going back alone in the dark; we've very nearly
quarrelled over it already."

"The fact is," said Trevellyan, wondering if Mrs. Willoughby were the
sort of person to have hysterics, "that there's been a telephone warning
to say an air-raid is on, just over Staningham. They're heading this
way, so we may hear a gun or two, you know; some of our machines are in
pursuit."

He gazed anxiously at Lesbia, whom he characteristically supposed to be
about either to burst into tears or to threaten a fainting fit.

The ideas of Captain Trevellyan were perhaps not much more advanced than
those of Lady Vivian's secretary.

But Mrs. Willoughby discounted his solicitude, at least on one score, in
a moment.

"Zepps!" she screamed excitedly. "How too thrilling! Can I possibly get
on to the roof, I wonder? I've never seen one yet."

"Stop!" said the astonished Trevellyan. "You don't realize. They'll be
over here in a few minutes, and our machines may be firing at them,
besides the guns on the hill; there'll be shrapnel falling."

Mrs. Willoughby tore off her overall and snatched up Puff.

"I must, must see it all!" she declared wildly. "Have you got a pair of
field-glasses?"

Trevellyan restrained her forcibly from dashing to the door.

"Mrs. Willoughby, we've got to consider that there are a number of
people here, and that they are all in a certain amount of danger--not so
much from bombs, though goodness knows they may very well drop one, but
from our own shrapnel. Is there a basement?"

"You can't send us to the cellar? My dear boy, I, for one, refuse to go.
We're not children, and we're not afraid. We're Englishwomen!"

On this superb sentiment Mrs. Willoughby swept into the middle of the
hall and announced in penetrating accents that a Zepp raid was on, and
had any one got a pair of field-glasses?

There was a momentary outbreak of exclamations all around, and then
Captain Trevellyan raised his voice: "Please keep away from the windows.
There may be broken glass about."

"Is it dangerous? What are we to do?" gasped Tony, next him. She was
rather white.

At the same moment the very distant but unmistakable reverberation of
guns became audible.

Trevellyan took instant advantage of the sudden cessation of sound in
the room.

"If there is a basement, it would be as well for everybody to go down
there, please--just for precaution's sake. And then I'm going to put out
these lights." His hand was on the nearest gas-jet as he spoke.

"Nothing will induce me to _stir_ while there's any danger. I can answer
for every woman here!" cried Lesbia, with a gesture of noble defiance.

Grace Jones came into the middle of the room.

"Hadn't we better obey orders?" she asked gently. "There is a basement
beyond the kitchen."

She held out her hand to Miss Anthony, and they went through the door
into the kitchen.

After an instant's hesitation, the other women followed. Trevellyan saw
that they had lit a candle, and in a moment he heard them beginning to
talk quietly amongst themselves.

A few soldiers in the hall had congregated together, and were talking
and laughing. The others made a dash for the door as the firing grew
louder, and simultaneously exclaimed: "Here they are!"

The sound of the huge machines far overhead was unmistakable. They could
see the shrapnel bursting, and the guns on the hill boomed heavily and
intermittently.

"Look!" shrieked Lesbia, almost hurling herself out of the door.
"They've got one of them! I can see it blazing!"

Far away, a red spot began to glow, then suddenly revealed the
cigar-shaped form in flames, dropping downwards.

"They've got it!" echoed Trevellyan. "Look! it's coming down. Miles
away, by this time. I wonder how many of ours are giving chase."

The air was full of whirring, buzzing wings, and very far away a red
light in the sky seemed to tell of fire.

Occasional sparks and flashes told of the bursting of shrapnel, but the
sounds were dying away rapidly.

"It's over, and, by Jove, we've got him!" shouted Trevellyan, dashing
back into the kitchen. Every one was talking at once, Mrs. Willoughby's
voice dominating the rest.

"I saw the whole thing _too_ perfectly! At _least_ five of the brutes,
and two, if not three, of them in flames! I saw them with my own eyes!"
she proclaimed, with more spirit than exactitude. "And where are those
poor creatures hiding like rats in the cellar?"

"The noise was awful!" said Tony, shuddering. "It felt as though it were
right over our heads. But," she added valiantly, "I do wish we'd seen it
all!"

Trevellyan turned to her apologetically. "I'm so sorry. But I really
couldn't help it. They sent me down on purpose to see that this place
was warned. It was really perfectly splendid of you to go down like that
and miss all the fun."

"I was very frightened," she told him honestly, "though I do _awfully_
wish I'd seen it. They must have had a splendid view from the Hostel at
the top of the street."

"There was a splendid view from _here_," said Lesbia cuttingly. "_I_ saw
everything there was to be seen."

Trevellyan was looking for Miss Jones.

"Thank you so much for giving them the lead you did," he said to her
gratefully. "It was very good of you. I felt such a brute for asking you
to do it; but there really is danger, you know, especially from the
windows, if shrapnel shatters the glass."

"Oh yes, I know. I wonder," said Grace thoughtfully, "whether they heard
it much at Plessing."

"I know. I was thinking of that all the time. Not that she'd be nervous,
you know, except on his account."

"It would be dreadful for Sir Piers. Oh, I do hope they didn't hear much
of it," said Grace.

One of the men approached her. "If you please, Sister, could you come
down into the kitching 'alf a minute?"

Grace went.

Trevellyan watched them all disperse, and escorted Mrs. Willoughby to
her tram, wondering if he ought not to see her home.

But Lesbia refused all escort, declaring gallantly that _she_ did not
know the meaning of fear, and, anyway, Puffles would protect his missus
from any more dreadful, wicked Zepps.

He left her entertaining her tram conductress with a spirited account of
all that she had seen, and much that she had not seen, of the raid.

As he turned down Pollard Street again, a soldier with his hand bound up
lurched out of the open door of the deserted Canteen.

"Is there any one in there to shut the place up?" Trevellyan asked him.

"One of the ladies is still in there, sir. Beg pardon, sir; she's a bit
upset like."

Trevellyan thought of little Miss Anthony, who had owned, with a white
face, how much the sound of the guns had frightened her.

He went into the hall. It was dark, but there was a light in the
kitchen.

"Who's there?" said John.

"I am. It's all right," replied an enfeebled voice; and he went into the
kitchen.

Grace Jones was half leaning and half sitting against the sink, her
small face haggard, her hands clutching the only support within reach,
the wooden top of a roller-towel.

"I'm afraid you're ill," exclaimed Trevellyan, looking desperately round
him for a chair.

"It's all right; please don't wait."

"But it's over now. They brought the brute down. It's miles away by this
time."

He multiplied his reassurances.

"No, no; it's not that," gasped Miss Jones, looking whiter than ever.

"There were certainly no casualties over here. We should have seen signs
of fire somewhere if they'd dropped a bomb."

"It's _not_ that!" Grace told him desperately.

Trevellyan gazed at her helplessly, and repeated in an obtuse manner:
"It's all over now--absolutely safe."

Grace gazed back at him with a wan smile.

"Would you mind going?" she asked him feebly. "I shall be all right in a
minute. It's very tiresome, but the sight of--of blood always upsets me
like this, and that man had cut his finger rather badly, and I had to do
it up. It's only--that."

She put her hands up to her damp forehead as though the effort of speech
had brought back the sensation of nausea.

"You're going to faint!" exclaimed Trevellyan. "Let me get some water
for you."

"No, I'm not. _Oh, do go_!"

"I can't leave you like this," protested the bewildered John.

Grace staggered to her feet, and stood holding on to the edge of the
sink.

"I'm afraid--I'm only going to be sick," she said with difficulty.

Ten minutes later they locked up the Canteen and went up Pollard Street.

"You see, it had nothing to do with the raid," Grace told him gently.
"It was just that poor man bleeding. I've always been like that; it's
the only way I'm delicate, because I'm never ill, and I don't ever have
nerves. But it is very tiresome. That's why I couldn't go and work in a
hospital. I did clerical work in the hospital at home for a little
while, but it wasn't any good."

"Bad luck!"

"It is, rather. I hate anybody's knowing about it; that's why I said I'd
stay behind and lock up. I knew it was going to happen, and I didn't
want any one to be there."

"I'm sorry. I thought it was the raid that had upset you, and that you
might be going to faint."

"Nothing so romantic," said Miss Jones regretfully.

But her regrets were as nothing to those of the Hostel when they learnt
what had happened.

It was impossible to conceal it from them, since the window of the
ground-floor bedroom had been open, and Mrs. Potter and Miss Marsh,
leaning from it, and listening eagerly, had heard every word of Captain
Trevellyan's final discourse to Miss Jones, and her repeated assurances
of being now completely restored.

They flew into the hall to meet her.

"Gracie dear, what _has_ happened to you? Tony was in such a state when
she found you hadn't come in with her and the others."

"Was it that beastly raid upset you?"

Grace once more repudiated the raid with as much energy as she could
muster.

"You look as white as a sheet, dear! Come into the sitting-room."

Every one was in the sitting-room, including those first back from the
Canteen, and the pseudo-invalids who, having been in bed when the raid
began, felt that only tea could enable them to face the night, and had
hurried down in search of it.

"Oh, Gracie, there you are! I was just going back to see what had become
of you," said Tony.

"Miss Vivian's cousin brought her home!" giggled Mrs. Potter. "You know,
the Staff Officer one. She's been awfully upset, poor Grace! Turned
quite faint, didn't you, dear?"

"But you were so brave!" cried Tony, aghast. "You were all right all the
time the raid was on. You didn't mind a bit!"

"Came over you afterwards, I expect, didn't it?" said Miss Delmege
kindly. "It's often the case. I'm always perfectly cool myself when
anything happens--I was tonight--but I generally suffer for it
afterwards. Reaction, I suppose. When I came downstairs after it was all
over I was simply shaking, wasn't I, Mrs. Bullivant?"

"Now, it's a funny thing," remarked Miss Henderson, without giving any
one time to dwell upon Miss Delmege's personal reminiscences--"it's a
funny thing, but I simply didn't feel the least bit of fear. Not for
myself, you know. I just thought, well, I hope mother doesn't see any of
this--she's got a bit of a heart, you know--but I didn't seem to feel a
bit as though I was in any kind of danger myself. Not a bit."

"Now, just sit down, child, and drink up this tea," said Mrs. Bullivant
to Grace. "You've not a scrap of colour in your face."

"I'm really all right now, thank you very much," Grace told her as she
took the tea gratefully. "And it wasn't anything to do with the raid."

Everybody looked rather disappointed.

"Aren't you well, then, dear? I do hope it isn't another case of
influenza."

"I bet I know!" suddenly cried Tony. "It was doing up that man's hand
upset you, wasn't it? He cut himself somehow in the excitement and was
bleeding like a fountain, poor fellow! I thought you looked rather
squeamish while you were doing it, poor thing! but I 

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