The girl took stock of her and, apparently reassured, closed the door behind her. “I’m not so sure you’re not right after all,” she said, fixing a critical eye upon the rival suites. “It is a bit mousey, that other.”!

CHAPTER VIII “It sounds like Meredith,” suggested Joan. “I am not quite sure.”

A Conscientious Objector. She might have guessed it. A “Conchy,” as they would call him in the Press: all the spiteful screamers who had never risked a scratch, themselves, denouncing him as a coward. The local Dogberrys of the tribunals would fire off their little stock of gibes and platitudes upon him, propound with owlish solemnity the new Christianity, abuse him and condemn him, without listening to him. Jeering mobs would follow him through the streets. More than once, of late, she had encountered such crowds made up of shrieking girls and foul-mouthed men, surging round some white-faced youngster while the well-dressed passers-by looked on and grinned. The striking of the old church clock recalled her to herself. But she had only a few minutes’ walk before her. Mary had given up her Church work. It included the cleaning, and she had found it beyond her failing strength. But she still lived in the tiny cottage behind its long strip of garden. The door yielded to Joan’s touch: it was seldom fast closed. And knowing Mary’s ways, she entered without knocking and pushed it to behind her, leaving it still ajar. It was earlier than the time she had fixed in her own mind and, pausing with her elbows resting on the granite parapet, she watched the ceaseless waters returning to the sea, bearing their burden of impurities.