't be sorry when it's over. Goin' out and
comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere. Wonderful spirit they've got,
too. I never look at the clock now but what I think: 'There you go,
slow-coach! I'd like to set you on to the day the boys come back!' When
I puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell' I thinks. And so it is, miss, from
all I can 'ear. I've got a son out there meself. It's 'ere they'll come
along. You stand quiet and keep a lookout, and you'll get a few minutes
with him when he's done with 'is men. I wouldn't move, if I were you;
he'll come to you, all right--can't miss you, there.' And, looking at
her face, he thought: 'Astonishin' what a lot o' brothers go. Wot oh!
Poor little missy! A little lady, too. Wonderful collected she is. It's
'ard!'" And trying to find something consoling to say, he mumbled out:
"You couldn't be in a better place for seen'im off. Good night, miss;
anything else I can do for you?"

"No, thank you; you're very kind."

He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very
still. He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty
milk-cans, far down the platform where a few civilians in similar case
were scattered. The trainway was empty as yet. In the grey immensity of
the station and the turmoil of its noise, she felt neither lonely nor
conscious of others waiting; too absorbed in the one thought of seeing
him and touching him again. The empty train began backing in, stopped,
and telescoped with a series of little clattering bangs, backed on
again, and subsided to rest. Noel turned her eyes towards the station
arch ways. Already she felt tremulous, as though the regiment were
sending before it the vibration of its march.

She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of brave
array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her. Suddenly
she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge, out of which
a thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of music, no waved
flag. She had a longing to rush down to the barrier, but remembering
the words of the porter, stayed where she was, with her hands tightly
squeezed together. The trickle became a stream, a flood, the head of
which began to reach her. With a turbulence of voices, sunburnt men,
burdened up to the nose, passed, with rifles jutting at all angles; she
strained her eyes, staring into that stream as one might into a walking
wood, to isolate a single tree. Her head reeled with the s