The little room looked very cosy when Mary had made up the fire and lighted the lamp. She seated Joan in the worn horsehair easy-chair; out of which one had to be careful one did not slip on to the floor; and spread her handsome shawl over the back of the dilapidated sofa. 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.!

“And if he can’t?” suggested Joan. “He’s right,” said a dreamy-eyed looking man, laying down the book he had been reading. “We should have done just the same. ‘My country, right or wrong.’ After all, it is an ideal.”

It welcomed her, as always, with its smile of cosy neatness. The spotless curtains that were Mary’s pride: the gay flowers in the window, to which she had given children’s names: the few poor pieces of furniture, polished with much loving labour: the shining grate: the foolish china dogs and the little china house between them on the mantelpiece. The fire was burning brightly, and the kettle was singing on the hob. “I will stay with her for a little while,” she said. “Till I feel there is no more need. Then I must get back to work.” “From his saying to himself: ‘This is Flossie’s idea of a party. This is the sort of thing that, if I marry her, I am letting myself in for.’ If he hasn’t broken off the engagement already, we may be in time.”