Anna would
come out and place the tea-tray. Spread out across the girl's knee was a
square of canvas, a section of a bed-spread, on which was traced an
intricate and beautiful Jacobean design. Rose had already been working
at it for six months, and she hoped to have finished it by the 14th of
December, her mother's birthday. She enjoyed doing this beautiful work,
of which the pattern had been lent to her by a country neighbour who
collected such things.

How surprised Rose would have been on this early August afternoon could
she have foreseen that this cherished piece of work, on which she had
already lavished so many hours of close and pleasant toil, would soon
be put away for an indefinite stretch of time; and that knitting, which
she had always disliked doing, would take its place!

But no such thought, no such vision of the future, came into her mind as
she bent her pretty head over her work.

She felt rather excited, a thought more restless than usual. England at
war, and with Germany! Dear old Anna's Fatherland--the great country to
which Rose had always been taught by her mother to look with peculiar
affection, as well as respect and admiration.

Rose and Mrs. Otway had hoped to go to Germany this very autumn. They
had saved up their pennies--as Mrs. Otway would have put it--for a
considerable time, in order that they might enjoy in comfort, and even
in luxury, what promised to be a delightful tour. Rose could hardly
realise even yet that their journey, so carefully planned out, so often
discussed, would now have to be postponed. They were first to have gone
to Weimar, where Mrs. Otway had spent such a happy year in her girlhood,
and then to Munich, to Dresden, to Nuremberg--to all those dear old
towns with whose names Rose had always been familiar. It seemed such a
pity that now they would have to wait till after the war to go to
Germany.

After the war? Fortunately the people she had seen that day--and there
had been a good deal of coming and going in the Close--all seemed to
think that the war would be over very soon, and this pleasant view had
been confirmed in a rather odd way.

Rose's cousin, James Hayley, had rung her up on the telephone from
London. She had been very much surprised, for a telephone message from
London to Witanbury costs one-and-threepence, and James was careful
about such things. When he did telephone, which was very seldom, he
always waited to do so till the evening, when the fee