“I think that’s why I love it,” she said: “for it’s dear, old-fashioned ways. We will teach it the new dreams, too. It will be so shocked, at first.” Mrs. Denton had died. She had left Joan her library, together with her wonderful collection of note books. She had brought them all up-to-date and indexed them. They would be invaluable to Francis when he started the new paper upon which they had determined. He was still in the hospital at Breganze, near to where his machine had been shot down. She had tried to get to him; but it would have meant endless delays; and she had been anxious about her father. The Italian surgeons were very proud of him, he wrote. They had had him X-rayed before and after; and beyond a slight lameness which gave him, he thought, a touch of distinction, there was no flaw that the most careful scrutiny would be likely to detect. Any day, now, he expected to be discharged. Mary had married an old sweetheart. She had grown restless in the country with nothing to do, and, at the suggestion of some friends, had gone to Bristol to help in a children’s hospital; and there they had met once more.!

“It was only a little thing, of course, that,” she answered. “But I’ve been thinking it must be that that’s at the bottom of it all; and that is why God lets there be weak things—children and little animals and men and women in pain, that we feel sorry for, so that people like you and Robert and so many others are willing to give up all your lives to helping them. And that is what He wants.” “Oh, I!” answered the girl. “I go everywhere where there’s a chance of picking up a swell husband. They’ve got to come to these shows, they can’t help themselves. One never knows what incident may give one one’s opportunity.”

“And you don’t forget our compact, do you?” he continued, “that I am to be your backer. I want to be in it too.” “Curious,” said the girl, “so am I. My father’s a mill manager near Bolton. You weren’t educated there?” She heard the joyous yell and the shrill laughter as she struggled wildly to force her way to him. And then for a moment there was a space and a man with bent body and clenched hands was rushing forward as if upon a football field, and there came a little sickening thud and then the crowd closed in again.