day" came.

CHAPTER XIX

A few weeks after Freddy's death a curious thing happened to Margaret,
a thing which shook her nerves and disturbed the automatic calm into
which she had drilled her thoughts.

She was still a hard-working pantry-maid, doing the same daily round of
apparently unwarlike work. She was thankful that she had got it to do,
and considered herself lucky, for the waiting lists of able and eager
V.A.D.'s, whose names were down at hospitals and convalescent homes,
ran into many figures, girls who were longing to be given any sort of
occupation, however humble, which would place them amongst the women of
England who were really in touch with the agony of the world. Margaret
had still the promise before her of promotion, the hope that eventually
she would reach the wards. Time would make its demands on the long
lists of V.A.D.'s who were unemployed and eager for work. It would not
be long before they would all be required. Someone else would step
into her humble post when she was promoted. It was merely a case of
patience and pluck; the voluntary hospitals were dependent on voluntary
aid. She gave hers gladly.

It was a very lonely, self-contained Margaret who wandered about London
during her "off-hours." Two hours gave her very little time for making
expeditions or seeing the sights of London, which were all unknown to
her, so she spent the greater part of her time in the secluded
garden-square close to her lodgings. It always reminded her of a small
public garden in Paris, in the old-fashioned quarter of the city, in
which she had lived for a year with a French family while she was
perfecting her French. The odd mixture of people who frequented it,
and monopolized the seats in it for hours at a time, interested her.
The work which they brought with them was as diverse as it was
peculiar. Not a few of the regular habitues made a home of it, even on
wet days, only returning to their shelter to sleep. Youth and elegance
seldom entered it, except, it might be, when a pair of lovers, of
non-British birth, drifted into it, seeking refuge from the madding
crowd.

A London church, as black and white with smoke and the wearing winds of
time as the marble churches of Lombardy, raised its belfry, of
unnamable architecture, picturesquely above the square on one side,
while a portion of its graveyard, which had been incorporated in the
garden-square, and which seemed to Margaret in its shabby