ing England's fairest flowers indeed. A certain chapter in her life,
which had seemed to promise many very sweet hopes, was now for ever
closed.

"They might have put his V.C. on the list," she said to herself. "I wish
I knew where he's buried. I shall never forget him--though I only saw
him twice. He was quite different from anyone else I've ever met."

Somehow Marjorie did not feel capable of mentioning Private Preston to
anybody, even to Dona. She had kept the little newspaper photograph of
him which had been cut out of the _Onlooker_, when he won his V.C. She
enclosed it in an envelope and put it within the leaves of her Bible.
That seemed the most appropriate place for it. She could not leave it
amongst the portraits of her other war heroes, for fear her room-mates
might refer to it. To discuss him now with Betty or Sylvia would be a
desecration. His death was a wound that would not bear handling. For
some days afterwards she was unusually quiet. The girls thought she was
fretting about her brother, and tried to cheer her up, for Larry's
bulletins were excellent, and he seemed to be making a wonderful
recovery.

"He is to leave the military hospital in a fortnight," wrote Mrs.
Anderson, "and be transferred to a Red Cross hospital. We are using all
our influence to get him sent to Whitecliffe, where Aunt Ellinor and
Elaine could specially look after him."

To have Larry at Whitecliffe would indeed be a cause for rejoicing.
Marjorie could picture the spoiling he would receive at the Red Cross
Hospital. She wondered if he would have the same bed that had been
occupied by Private Preston. It was No. 17, she remembered. "One shall
be taken, and the other left," she thought. For Larry there was the glad
welcome and the nursing back to life and health, and for that other
brave boy a grave in a foreign land. Some lines from a little volume of
verses flashed to her memory. They had struck her attention only a week
before, and she had learnt them by heart.

"For us--
The parting and the sorrow;
For him--
'God speed!'
One fight,--
A noble deed,--
'Good-night!'
And no to-morrow.
Where he is,
In Thy Peace
Time is not,
Nor smallest sorrow."

Marjorie was almost glad that on her next exeat at The Tamarisks Elaine
was away from home. She was afraid her cousin might speak of Private
Preston, and she did not wish to mention his name aga