n uncivilised--"

"They make the most appalling noises with their soup. . . . Do you
remember that German baron at the _table d'hote_ at Genoa?"

"The point is that, with all their thoroughness in plotting, they
have no _savoir faire_; they are educated beyond the capacity of
their breeding; and the older, lazier, civilised nations have--as the
saying is--caught the barbarian stiff. It is--as you choose to look
at it--a tragedy of tactlessness or a triumph of tact; and for our
time, anyway, the last word upon the Church of Christ--call it
Eastern or Western, Roman, Lutheran, or Anglican."

Mrs Steele looked at her husband earnestly. "If you believe that--"

"But I do believe it," he interrupted.

"If you believe that," she persisted, "I can understand your
doubting, even despairing over a hundred things. . . . But below it
all I feel that you are angry with something deeper."

"Eh?"

"With something in yourself."

"Yes, you're right," he answered savagely. "You shall know what it
is," said he, on the instant correcting himself to tenderness, "when
I've taken hat and stick and gone out and wrestled with it."

As luck would have it, on his way down the hill he encountered Mr
Hambly, and delivered his message.

"The notion is that we form a small Emergency Committee. Here at
home, in the next few weeks or months, many things will want doing.
For the most important, we must keep an eye on the wives and families
whose breadwinners have gone off to fight; see that they get their
allotments of pay and separation allowances; and administer as wisely
as we can the relief funds that are already being started. Also the
ladies will desire, no doubt, to form working-parties, make hospital
shirts, knit socks, tear and roll lint for bandages. My wife even
suggests an ambulance class; and I have written to Mant, at St
Martin's, who may be willing to come over (say) once a week and teach
us the rudiments of 'First Aid' on the chance--a remote one, I own--
that one of these days we may get a boat-load of wounded at Polpier.
I'll admit, too, that all these preparations may well strike you as
petty, and even futile. But they may be good, anyhow, for our own
souls' health. They will give us a sense of helping."

Mr Hambly took off his spectacles and wiped them, for his eyes were
moist. "Do you know," said he, smiling, "that I was on my way to
visit you with a very similar proposal? . . . Now, as you are a good
thirt