dvantage resulting from their attitude. He could not,
however, concede any others.

At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle
Arthur very nearly gay, and both his wife and the twins were most
uncomfortable. "I wonder what's the matter now," sighed Aunt Alice
to herself, as she nervously crumbled her toast.

It could mean nothing good, Arthur in such spirits on a wet Sunday, when
he hadn't been able to get his golf and the cook had overdone the joint.

CHAPTER III

And so, on a late September afternoon, the _St. Luke_, sliding away from
her moorings, relieved Uncle Arthur of his burden.

It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it would
not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies themselves
knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made Uncle Arthur feel so
pleasant as he walked home across his park from golf to tea that for a
moment he was actually of a mind to kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and
perhaps even address her in the language of resuscitated passion, which
in Uncle Arthur's mouth was Old Girl,--an idea he abandoned, however, in
case it should make her self-satisfied and tiresome--the same knowledge
that produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of the
_St. Luke_ hungrily watching the people on the wharf.

For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth whose
enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one direction.
And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother, in England. It
seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so far away, and leave
her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel like that. She was with
them just the same; wherever they went now she would be with them, and
they could hear her saying at that very moment, "Little darlings,
_don't_ cry...." But it was a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort of
afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of the people
waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to them.

"We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the
handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.

"I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked Anna-Felicitas in her
gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of bother with her
eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the fact that she was
sniffing.

Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at