on. Besides Dick's unit there was a
regiment going. The men stood lined up in the big square yard of the
station. Some had women with them, wives and mothers and sweethearts;
children clung to the women's skirts, unnoticed and frightened into
quietness by the sight and sound of their mothers' grief. Railway
officials, looking very important and frightfully overworked, ran in and
out of the crowd. The train was standing at the platform, part of it
already full, nearly every window had its little group of anxious-faced
women, trying to say good-bye to their respective relatives in the
carriage.

Dick and Joan walked the length of the train, and found that Dick's man
had stowed away his things and reserved a place for his master in one of
the front carriages. Then Colonel Rutherford and Mabel joined them and
they all talked, trying to keep up an animated conversation as to the
weather; would the Channel crossing be very rough; what chance was there
of his going to Boulogne instead of to Havre; Joan stood close to Dick,
just touching him; there was something rather pathetic in the way she
did not attempt to close her hand upon the roughness of his coat, but
was content to feel it brushing against her. The regimental band had
struck up "Tipperary"; the men were being marshalled to take their
places in the train. Joan wondered if the band played so loud and so
persistently to drown the noise of the women's crying. One young wife
had hysterics, and had to be carried away screaming. They saw the
husband, he had fallen out of the ranks to try and hold the girl when
the crying first began, now he stood and stared after her as they
carried her away. Quite a boy, very white about the face, and with
misery in his eyes. Joan felt a wave of resentment against the woman;
she had no right, because she loved him, to make his going so much the
harder to bear.

A porter ran along the platform calling out, "Take your seats, please,
take your seats." Uncle John was shaking hands and saying good-bye to
Dick, "I'll look after her for you," Joan heard him say. Then Mabel
moved between them for a second, and pulling down Dick's head, kissed
him. After that, it seemed, she was left alone with Dick; Colonel
Rutherford and Mabel had gone away. How desperately her hand for the
second clutched on to the piece of his coat that was near to her! She
could not let him go, could not, could not. The engine whistle emitted a
long thin squeak, the soldiers