“Save her from what?” demanded Joan. “What does he think,” she asked, “about your illness?”!

Joan crept back into bed. A new wonder had come to her. And from that night Joan’s belief in Mrs. Munday’s God began to fade, circumstances helping. Again the question troubled her. She had not seen her father since that week-end, nearly six months ago, when she had ran down to see him because she wanted something from him. “He felt my mother’s death very deeply,” she answered. “But he’s well enough in health.”

She had written him at the beginning of the war, telling him of her wish to get out to the front, and he thought that now he might be able to help her. In the day-time, when Arthur and her father were at the works, she would move through the high, square, stiffly-furnished rooms, or about the great formal garden, with its ordered walks and level lawns. And as with knowledge we come to love some old, stern face our childish eyes had thought forbidding, and would not have it changed, there came to her with the years a growing fondness for the old, plain brick-built house. Generations of Allways had lived and died there: men and women somewhat narrow, unsympathetic, a little hard of understanding; but at least earnest, sincere, seeking to do their duty in their solid, unimaginative way. Perhaps there were other ways besides those of speech and pen. Perhaps one did better, keeping to one’s own people; the very qualities that separated us from them being intended for their need. What mattered the colours, so that one followed the flag? Somewhere, all roads would meet. Joan was about to reply when the maid’s announcement of “Mrs. Denton” postponed the discussion.