the table to his wife. He did not guess at the dull rage that filled her
as she read them--the unreasoning jealousy that these children should
have opportunities so far beyond any that were likely to occur for her
own, who squabbled angrily over their breakfast while she read.

"She seems to have any amount of money to spend on gadding about," she
would say unpleasantly.

"Oh, pots of money. Wish to goodness I had some of it," her husband
would answer. Money was always scarce in the Rainham household.

When the thunderbolt of war fell upon the world, Aunt Margaret, after
the first pangs of panic, stiffened her back, and declined to leave
France. England, she declared, was not much safer than anywhere else;
and was it likely that she and Cecilia would run away when Bob was
coming back? Bob, just eighteen, captain of his school training corps,
stroke of its racing boat, and a mighty man of valour at football, slid
naturally into khaki within a month of the outbreak of war, putting
aside toys, with all the glad company of boys of the Empire, until such
time as the Hun should be taught that he had no place among white men.
Aunt Margaret and Cecilia, knitting frantically at socks and mufflers
and Balaclava helmets, were desperately proud of him, and compared his
photograph, in uniform, with all the pictures of Etienne and Henri and
Armand, and other French boys who had played with him under the trees at
Fontainebleau, and had now marched away to join him at the greater game.
It was difficult to realize that they were not still little boys in
blouses and knickerbockers--difficult even when they swooped down from
time to time on short leave, filling the quiet houses with pranks and
laughter that were wholly boyish. Even when Bob had two stars on
his cuff, and wore the ribbon of the Military Cross, it would have