hat the girls in their khaki stood round her at last glowing,
though dumb!--and felt themselves--as she bade them feel--the
comrades-in-arms of their sweethearts and their brothers.

Then with the March twilight she was again at Mannering. She changed
her bicycling dress, and six o'clock found her at her desk,
obediently writing from the Squire's dictation.

He put her through a stiff series of geographical notes, including a
number of quotations from Homer and Herodotus, bearing on the spread
of Greek culture in the Aegean. During the course of them he broke
out once or twice into his characteristic sayings and illustrations,
racy or poetic, as usual, and Elizabeth would lift her blue eyes,
with the responsive look in them, on which he had begun to think all
his real power of work depended. But not a word passed between them
on any other subject; and when it was over she rose, said a quiet
good-night, and went away. After she had gone, the Squire sat over
the fire, brooding and motionless, for most of the evening.

One March afternoon, a few days later, the following letter reached
Pamela, who was still with her sister. It was addressed in Desmond
Mannering's large and boyish handwriting.

'B.E.F., _March_.

'MY DEAR PAMELA--I am kicking my heels here at an engineer's
store, waiting for an engineer officer who is wanted to plan
some new dug-outs for our battery, and as there is no one to
talk to inside except the most inarticulate Hielander I ever
struck, I shall at last make use of one of your little
oddments, my dear, which are mostly too good to use out
here--and write you a letter on a brand new pocket-pad, with a
brand new stylo.

'I expect you know from Arthur about where we are. It's a
pretty nasty bit of the line. The snipers here are the
cleverest beasts out. There isn't a night they don't get some
of us, though our fellows are as sharp as needles too. I went
over a sniping school last week with a jolly fellow who used to
hunt lions in Africa. My hat!--we have learnt a thing or two
from the Huns since we started. But you have to keep a steady
look-out, I can tell you. There was a man here last night in a
sniper's post, shooting through a trench loophole, you
understand, which had an iron panel. Well, he actually went to
sleep with his rifle in his hand, having had a dog's life for
two or three night