they were not still little boys in
blouses and knickerbockers--difficult even when they swooped down from
time to time on short leave, filling the quiet houses with pranks and
laughter that were wholly boyish. Even when Bob had two stars on
his cuff, and wore the ribbon of the Military Cross, it would have
astonished Aunt Margaret and Cecilia very much had anyone suggested that
he was grown up.

Indeed, Aunt Margaret was never to think of him as anything but "one of
the children." Illness, sudden and fierce, fell upon her after a long
spell of duty at the hospital where she worked from the first few months
of the war--working as cook, since she had no nursing experience, and
was, she remarked, too old to learn a new trade. Brave as she was, there
was no battling for her against the new foe; she faded out of life after
a few days, holding Cecilia's hand very tightly until the end.

Bob, obtaining leave with much difficulty, arrived a few days later, to
find a piteous Cecilia, white-faced, stunned and bewildered. She pleaded
desperately against leaving France; amidst all the horror and chaos that
had fallen upon her, it seemed unthinkable that she should put the sea
between herself and Bob. But to remain was impossible. Aunt Margaret's
English maids wanted to go back to their friends, and a girl of
seventeen could scarcely stay alone in a country torn by two years of
war. Besides, Aunt Margaret's affairs were queerly indefinite; there
seemed very little money where there had formerly been plenty. There was
no alternative for Cecilia but England--and England meant the Rainham
household, and such welcome as it might choose to give her.

She was still bewildered when they made the brief journey across the
Channel--a new Channel, peopled only with war-ships of every kind, from
grim Dreadnoughts to submarines; with aircraft, bearing the red, white
and blue circles of Britain, floating and circling overhead. Last time
Cecilia had crossed, it had been with Aunt Margaret on a big turbine
mail boat; they had reached Calais just as an excursion steamer from
Margate came up, gay with flags and light dresses, with a band playing
ragtime on the well-deck, and people dancing to a concertina at the
stern. Now they zig-zagged across, sometimes at full speed, sometimes
stopping dead or altering their course in obedience to the destroyer
nosing ahead of them through the Channel mist; and she could see the
face of the captain on the brid