find him. It left punctually
to the minute--I hadn't much time to look."

Her aunt noticed the emotion in Margaret's voice. The woman in her
longed to put a motherly arm round the girl as she stood beside her,
but her training and national reserve prevented it. So instead of
letting her niece see how generous her sympathy was, she said, in
rather a strident voice, the result of her suppressed feeling:

"There is a good cup of coffee waiting for you in the small brown pot,
and you'll find some egg-sandwiches on a plate on the high shelf above
the tumbler-cupboard. Go and eat them at once, before a fresh lot of
men come in."

"Oh, I don't want anything," Margaret said pleadingly. "Let me help
you wash all these cups, please do, aunt. I really don't want anything
to eat."

"Whether you want it or not, I insist upon your eating it. Go now, at
once, don't waste time."

Her niece obeyed meekly. When her aunt talked like that, and brought
those tones into her voice, Margaret instantly lapsed back into her
childhood. She was once more the little black sheep of Kingdom-come,
the little black sheep who, at the death of her parents, had very
quickly learned to fear rather than to love the various paternal
relatives who had considered it their duty to bring her up in the way a
Lampton should go.

If Margaret's aunt could only have brought herself to speak to her
niece as she many times spoke to strangers of her, how different things
might have been between them! But this God-fearing woman never did.
She was too God-fearing and too little God-loving. She still clung
tenaciously to the old order of things, to the method of rearing girls
and responding to human nature which had been considered wise in her
young days.

While she dried the tea-cups, with a genuine feeling of sympathy for
Margaret in her heart, for she was convinced that this man's going to
the Front had upset her pretty niece, and while Margaret ate her
sandwiches and drank her coffee because she had been bidden to do so,
Michael's train was carrying him through the dark night. He was
sitting in the corridor, on the top of his kit, lost in thought. He
had missed his chance of getting a seat in any of the overcrowded
carriages by his delay in the free-refreshment-room. But what did it
matter? He was accustomed to discomfort, to unutterable hardships.

As he sat there, he heard and saw nothing of his surroundings, for
Margaret's eyes and beauty