ck herself. But Kew was
more ready. He dived for the pencil and wrote, "Only a bit punctured," on
the slate.

"You'd better bring it in and bathe it," suggested the lady, when she had
studied this.

They followed her in silent single file. Anonyma noticed that her hair
was apparently done in imitation of a pigeon's nest, also that many hooks
at the back of her dress had lost their grip of the situation.

The bathroom, whither Mr. Russell's Hound was carried, was suggestive of
another presence in the house. A boat, called _Golden Mary,_ was
navigating the bath. There were some prostrate soldiers and chessmen in a
little heap on the ledge, apparently waiting for a passage.

"I'm getting out my son's things because he is coming home," said the
lady.

Mr. Russell was bathing his bleeding Hound in the basin, and Anonyma was
at the window, ostentatiously drinking in the view. Kew took the slate
and wrote politely on it: "From school?"

"From the War," said the lady.

Kew donned a pleased and interested expression. It seemed to him better
to do this than to write, "Really!" on the slate.

"He wrote about a fortnight ago," the lady's harsh voice continued, "to
say he would come to-day. He said he was sick of being grown-up, he told
me to get out the soldiers and the _Golden Mary_. He wants to launch
them on the pond again."

Kew nodded. "I have felt like that," he murmured, and the lady seemed to
see the sense of his words.

"I should think you are six years older than Murray," she said, "and very
different. Come out into the garden, and I'll show you."

Kew followed her, and Anonyma, after a moment's hesitation, went too. But
Mr. Russell, who had finished his work of mercy, seemed to think it
better to linger in the bathroom, explaining to his Hound the subject of
a Biblical picture which hung over the bath.

"You might think I was rather too old to play things well," the mother
said to Kew. "But you should see me with Murray. Even my deafness never
hindered me with him, I could always see what he said. Look, we made this
road for the soldiers coming down to the wharf. Do you see the way we
helped nature, by tampering with the roots of the beech. It is a perfect
wharf, this little flat bit, it is just level with the deck of the boat
at high tide. The lower wharf is for low tide, but of course we have to
pretend the tides. That round place is the bandstand, and there the
pipers play when there is a troop-ship sta