content as she was, as most of her friends were, as the newspapers
were, to leave it all to Lord Kitchener and Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward
Grey, and even Mr. Lloyd George--though the latter had made some
rather foolish and exaggerated speeches about Alcohol. Michael, if
he went on like this, would _never_ get his knighthood!

Then when Michael had at last, thanks to General Armstrong, found
his right place and was accomplishing marvels--the papers said--as a
"mender of the maimed"--here was she left alone in Portland Place
with hardly any one to speak to, and all her acquaintances--she now
realized they were scarcely her friends--too much occupied with war
work to spend an afternoon in discussing nothing very important over
a sumptuous tea, still served by a butler and footman.

Presently, too, the butler left to join the Professor in France and
the footman enlisted, and the tea had to be served by a _distraite_
parlour-maid, with her eye on a munitions factory--so that she
might be "in it"--and her heart in the keeping of the footman, who,
since he had gone into khaki, was irresistible.

Mrs. Rossiter of course said, in 1914, that she would take up war
work. She subscribed most handsomely to the Soldiers' and Sailors'
Families' Association, to the Red Cross, to the Prince of Wales's
Fund (one of the unsolved war-time mysteries ... what's become of
it?), to the Cigarette Fund, the 1914 Christmas Plum Pudding Fund,
the Blue Cross, the Purple Cross, the Green Cross funds; to the
outstandingly good work at St. Dunstan's and at Petersham--(I am
glad she gave a Hundred pounds each to _them_); and to the
French, Belgian, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Portuguese and Japanese
Flag Days and to Our Own Day; besides enriching a number of
semi-fraudulent war charities which had alluring titles.

But if, from paying handsomely to all these praise-worthy endeavours
to mitigate the horrors of war, she proceeded to render personal
service, she became the despair of the paid organizers and
business-like workers. She couldn't add and she couldn't subtract or
divide with any certainty of a correct result; she couldn't spell
the more difficult words or remember the right letters to put after
distinguished persons' names when she addressed envelopes in her
large, childish handwriting; she couldn't be trusted to make
enquiries or to detect fraudulent appeals. She lost receipts and
never grasped the importance of vouchers; she forgot to fill up