was halved. But
to-day James had rung up just before luncheon, and she had heard his
voice almost as though he were standing by her side.

"Who's there? Oh, it's you, is it, Rose? I just wanted to say that I
shall probably be down Saturday night. I shan't be able to be away more
than one night, worse luck. I suppose you've heard what's happened?"

And then, as she had laughed--she had really not been able to help it
(how very odd James was! He evidently thought Witanbury _quite_ out of
the world), he had gone on, "It's a great bore, for it upsets everything
horribly. The one good point about it is that it won't last long."

"How long?" she had called out.

And he had answered rather quickly, "You needn't speak so loud. I hear
you perfectly. How long? Oh, I think it'll be over by October--may be a
little before, but I should say October."

"Mother thinks there'll be a sort of Trafalgar!"

And then he had answered, speaking a little impatiently for he was very
overworked just then, "Nothing of the sort! The people who will win this
war, and will win it quickly, are the Russians. We have information that
they will mobilise quickly--much more quickly than most people think.
You see, my dear Rose,"--he was generally rather old-fashioned in his
phraseology--"the Russians are like a steam roller"; she always
remembered that she had heard that phrase from him first. "We have
reason to believe that they can put ten million men into their fighting
line every year for fifty years!"

Rose, in answer, said the first silly thing she had said that day: "Oh,
I do _hope_ the war won't last as long as that!"

And then she had heard, uttered in a strange voice, the words, "Another
three minutes, sir?" and the hasty answer at the other end, "No,
certainly not! I've quite done." And she had hung up the receiver with a
smile.

And yet Rose, if well aware of his little foibles, liked her cousin well
enough to be generally glad of his company. During the last three months
he had spent almost every week-end at Witanbury. And though it was true,
as her mother often observed, that James was both narrow-minded and
self-opinionated, yet even so he brought with him a breath of larger
air, and he often told the ladies at the Trellis House interesting
things.

* * * * *

While Rose Otway sat musing over her beautiful work in the garden, good
old Anna came and went in her kitchen. She too still felt restless