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. The stone hall was still vibrating to the voices of the last departed guests. Joan was seated on a footstool before the fire in front of Mrs. Denton’s chair.!

Even Mrs. Grundy herself couldn’t object to a journalist dining with a politician! It surprised her when one evening after dinner he introduced it himself.

“Anything that can be done with a pen and ink,” she told him. “Tell me,” she said. “If it had been the photo of a woman with a bony throat and a beaky nose would you have read them?” “Oh, just a Christian gentleman,” she answered. “You will love him when you know him.”