med to have come.

"Well done, both of you," I said. "You really are getting on to-day. A
week ago I thought you'd never get finished, and now----" I waved my
hand encouragingly at the two heaps of wool-work.

"There," said Helen, "you've made me drop one."

"Pick it up again," I said with enthusiasm. "What were girls made for if
not to pick up dropped stitches? But tell me," I added, "what would
happen if you didn't pick it up?"

"My soldier," said Helen gloomily, "would go into the trenches and,
instead of having a muffler, he would suddenly find himself coming
undone all over him. Do you think he would like that?"

"No," I said, "he wouldn't. No soldier could possibly like a thing of
that sort when he's got to fight Germans."

"I wonder," put in Rosie, "what _my_ soldier will be like. I think I
should like him to have a moustache--yes, I'm sure I want him to have a
moustache."

"He'll have a moustache all right," said Helen, who is practical rather
than dreamy. "And he'll have whiskers, too, and a beard as long as your
arm. Do you think people have time to shave when they're in trenches?"

"Well, anyhow," said Rosie, "both our soldiers will be very brave men."

"That," said Helen, "is quite certain. Let's put in some good hard
stitches to thank them for their bravery."

There was a short silence while this operation was performed with great
zeal. The fingers flew through their complicated task and the web seemed
to grow visibly.

"Haven't you both," I said, "done about enough? Talk about mufflers! In
my day a muffler was something a man wore round his neck; but your
mufflers would serve to clothe a whole platoon from head to heel with
something left over. Benevolence is all very well, but you shouldn't
overdo it. There isn't a soldier alive who wouldn't trip over your
mufflers. Think of him tripped up by a muffler and caught by a German."

"Lady FRENCH," said Helen, "wrote in her letter to _The Times_ that
every muffler was to be two yards and a half long and twelve inches
broad."

"Well," I said, "you've got the breadth all right."

"Yes," said Helen, "we got that in the first line, and we've never let
go of it since. Anybody could get the breadth. _You_ could do that if
you tried."

"Graceless child," I said, "you don't seem to be aware that in my
earliest boyhood I once began to knit a sock."

"But you didn't finish it," said Helen. "I know that story."

"Fathers," said Rosie, "could knit very