id not say much else,
because for the present words were useless. Otherwise her own mind was
full of consoling reflections. A man, after all, is not so easily turned
aside from what must have been a very big purpose in his life. Already
Fanny could look into the future and say "Bless you, my children," in
her heart. She had been afraid, drawing her conclusions from Dick's face
and Joan's silence, that things were very much worse. Joan might, for
instance, have told the truth, and Dick, man-like, might have resented
it.

She ran downstairs presently and came up again with the breakfast,
fussing round Joan till the other made an attempt to eat something,
pouring out her tea for her, buttering her toast. "I should very much
like to see you have a jolly good cry, honey," she confessed when the
pretence at breakfast had finished. "It would do you a world of good.
But since you don't seem able to, I shall pull the curtains and you must
try and sleep. I'll come and call you again at ten."

Joan lay quite still in the dim and curtained room, but she did not
either sleep or cry. She did not even think very much. She could just
see the pattern of the wall-paper, and her mind occupied itself in
counting the roses and in working out how the line in between made
squares or diamonds.

It was like that all day; little things came to her assistance and
interested her enormously. The collection of flowers which Fanny had got
on her new hat; the map on the wall of the railway carriage; the fact
that the station master at Wrotham seemed to have grown very thin, and
was brushing his hair a new way. Uncle John met her as once before at
the station, and almost without thinking Joan lifted her face. He
stooped very gravely to kiss it. "You are welcome home, Joan," he said.
"We have been lonely without you."

The sound of his voice brought back to her mind the last time he had
spoken to her, and she was suddenly nervous and tongue-tied. A fat Sally
still rubbed her sides against the shafts, nothing had been changed. It
was just about this time she had come home two years ago, only now
nervousness and a confused sense of memories that hurt intolerably swept
aside all thoughts of pleasure and relief.

Uncle John made no further remark after his greeting until they were
driving down the village street. Then he turned to her suddenly.

"There is going to be war between England and Germany," he said. "Did
you see any signs of excitement in L