“Oh,” said Miss Tolley. “And were there any children?” He nodded. “I thought you were an artist,” he said. “Don’t let them ever take your drum away from you. You’ll go to pieces and get into mischief without it.”!

The nurse shot her a swift glance. “I’m glad of that,” she said dryly. She let Joan go upstairs. The landlady entered with Joan’s tea. Joan took an instinctive dislike to her. She was a large, flashy woman, wearing a quantity of cheap jewellery. Her familiarity had about it something almost threatening. Joan waited till she heard the woman’s heavy tread descending the stairs, before she expressed her opinion.

A motor carried them to where the road ended, and from there, a little one-horse ambulance took them on to almost the last trees of the forest. There was no life to be seen anywhere. During the last mile, they had passed through a continuous double line of graves; here and there a group of tiny crosses keeping one another company; others standing singly, looking strangely lonesome amid the torn-up earth and shattered trees. But even these had ceased. Death itself seemed to have been frightened away from this terror-haunted desert. Arthur sprang himself upon her a little before Christmas. He was full of a great project. It was that she and her father should spend Christmas with his people at Birmingham. Her father thought he would like to see his brother; they had not often met of late, and Birmingham would be nearer for her than Liverpool. She gave a slight start, for in their letters to one another they had been discussing this very point.