ion of Michael and old Mrs. Fleming, Anthony's entire
family had offered itself to its country; it was mobilized from Frances
and Anthony down to the very Aunties. In those days there were few Red
Cross volunteers who were not sure that sooner or later they would be
sent to the Front. Their only fear was that they might not be trained
and ready when the moment of the summons came. Strong young girls
hustled for the best places at the ambulance classes. Fragile, elderly
women, twitching with nervous anxiety, contended with these remorseless
ones and were pushed to the rear. Yet they went on contending, sustained
by their extraordinary illusion.

Aunt Louie, displaying an unexpected and premature dexterity with
bandages, was convinced that she would be sent to the Front if nobody
else was. Aunt Emmeline and Aunt Edith, in states of cerebral
excitement, while still struggling to find each other's arteries,
declared that they were going to the Front. They saw no earthly reason
why they should not go there. Uncle Maurice haunted the Emergency
class-rooms at the Polytechnic, wearing an Esmarch triangular bandage
round his neck, and volunteered as an instructor. He got mixed up with
his bandages, and finally consented to the use of his person as a
lay-figure for practical demonstrations while he waited for his orders
to go to the Front.

They forebore to comment on the palpable absurdity of each other's
hopes.

For, with the first outbreak of the War, the three Miss Flemings had
ceased from mutual recrimination. They were shocked into a curious
gentleness to each other. Every evening the old schoolroom (Michael's
study) was turned into a Red Cross demonstration hall, and there the
queer sight was to be seen of Louie, placable and tender, showing Edith
over and over again how to adjust a scalp bandage on Emmeline's head,
and of Emmeline motionless for hours under Edie's little, clumsy,
pinching fingers. It was thus, with small vibrations of tenderness and
charity, that they responded to the vast rhythm of the War.

And Grannie, immutable in her aged wisdom and malevolence, pushed out
her lower lip at them.

"If you three would leave off that folly and sit down and knit, you
might be some use," said Grannie. "Kitchener says that if every woman in
England knitted from morning till night he wouldn't have enough socks
for his Army."

Grannie knitted from morning till night. She knitted conspicuously, as a
protest against ba