“Do you mind?” he said. “We shall get there so much quicker.” “Much as Rome took Savonarola,” thought Madge.!

“Hullo!” she said. “Are you two concluding a bargain?” “Are they yours?” she asked. She had never connected them with the works, some half a mile away. Though had she been curious, she might have learnt that they were known as “Allway’s Folly.”

“Why can’t you help him in his own house, instead of wandering all about the country?” Flossie wanted to know. “But I’m so useless,” pleaded the woman. After a time, the care of the convalescents passed almost entirely into Joan’s hands, Madame Lelanne being told off to assist her. By dint of much persistence she had succeeded in getting the leaky roof repaired, and in place of the smoky stove that had long been her despair she had one night procured a fine calorifère by the simple process of stealing it. Madame Lelanne had heard about it from the gossips. It had been brought to a lonely house at the end of the village by a major of engineers. He had returned to the trenches the day before, and the place for the time being was empty. The thieves were never discovered. The sentry was positive that no one had passed him but two women, one of them carrying a baby. Madame Lelanne had dressed it up in a child’s cloak and hood, and had carried it in her arms. As it must have weighed nearly a couple of hundred-weight suspicion had not attached to them.