ompetent
sisters as too old to wait on wounded soldiers. Every morning she left
her household to old Nanna's care and went down to the City with
Anthony, and worked till evening in a room behind his office, receiving,
packing, and sending off great cases of food and clothing to the
Belgian soldiers.

Anthony was sad and worried, not because he had three sons, all well
under twenty-seven, but simply and solely because the Government
persisted in buying the wrong kind of timber--timber that swelled and
shrank again--for rifles and gun-carriages, and because officials
wouldn't listen to him when he tried to tell them what he knew about
timber, and because the head of a department had talked to _him_ about
private firms and profiteering. As if any man with three sons under
twenty-seven would want to make a profit out of the War; and as if they
couldn't cut down everybody's profits if they took the trouble. They
might cut his to the last cent so long as we had gun-carriages that
would carry guns and rifles that would shoot. He knew what he was
talking about and they didn't.

And Frances said he was right. He always had been right. She who had
once been impatient over his invariable, irritating rightness, loved it
now. She thought and said that if there were a few men like Anthony at
the head of departments we should win the War. We were losing it for
want of precisely that specialized knowledge and that power of
organization in which Anthony excelled. She was proud of him, not
because he was her husband and the father of her children, but because
he was a man who could help England. They were both proud of Michael and
Nicholas and John, not because they were their sons, but because they
were men who could fight for England.

They found that they loved England with a secret, religious, instinctive
love. Two feet of English earth, the ground that a man might stand and
fight for, became, mysteriously and magically, dearer to them than their
home. They loved England more than their own life or the lives of their
children. Long ago they had realized that fathers do not beget children
nor mothers bear them merely to gratify themselves. Now, in September
and October, they were realizing that children are not begotten and born
for their own profit and pleasure either.

When they sat together after the day's work they found themselves saying
the most amazing things to each other.

Anthony said, "Downham thinks John's heart is d