may cause them to anticipate
these.... And we shall be wise to prepare for eventualities. For myself,
having been despatched by the British Government on special service to
report to the Home Authorities upon our defences in the North--it is an
open secret now--I have been sent down here to put the town into a
condition to withstand siege. And frankly, without apology for necessary
and inevitable bluntness, one of the most important of those conditions
is--that the women and children should be got out of it."

The blow had been delivered. The angry blush that he had expected did not
invade the pale olive of her cheeks.

He added:

"I hope you will understand that I say this because it is my duty. I am
not naturally unsociable, or bearish, or a surly misogynist. Rather the
contrary. Quite the contrary."

She remembered a slim, boyish, young lieutenant of Hussars with whom she
had danced in a famous London ball-room more than twenty years back. That
boy a woman hater! Struggle as she would the Mother-Superior could not
keep Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne from coming to the surface for an instant.
But she went under directly, and left nothing but a spark of laughter in
the beautiful grave eyes.

"I understand," she said. "Woman in time of peace may add a certain
welcome pleasantness to life. In time of war she is nothing but a helpless
incubus."

"Let me point out, ma'am, that I did not say so. But she possesses a
capacity for being killed equal in ratio to that of the human male,
without being equally able to defend herself. In addition to this, she
eats; and I shall require all the rations that may be available to keep
alive the combatant members of the community."

"Eating is a habit," agreed the Mother-Superior, "which even the most
rigid disciplinarians of the body have found difficult to break."

His mouth straightened sternly under the short-clipped brown moustache.
Here was a woman who dared to bandy words with the Officer Commanding the
Garrison. He drew a shabby notebook from a breast-pocket, and consulted
it.

"On the eleventh, the day after to-morrow, a special train, leaving No. 2
platform of the railway-station, will be placed by the British Government
at the disposal of those married women, spinsters, and children who wish
to follow the example of those who left to-day, and go down to Cape Town.
Those who prefer to go North are advised to leave for Malamye Siding or
Johnstown, places at a certain distan