heeks, watery blue eyes,
snow-white hair, and generally picturesque personality made the more
enthusiastic members of the art class anxious to paint his portrait.
It was ascertained that he subsisted upon an old-age pension of five
shillings a week, and resided in a romantic-looking, creeper-covered
cottage just between the Grange and the village. To visit old
Wilkinson, and present him with potatoes from their own little
war-gardens, became an immediate institution among the girls. There
was no doubt about his gratitude. All was fish that came to his net,
and he accepted anything and everything, from tea and tobacco to books
which he could not read, with the same toothless smile and showers of
blessings. If, as Miss Gibbs suggested, his cottage would have been
improved by a little more soap and water, and a good stiff broom, that
did not really matter, as he was generally sitting outside on a bench
beside a beehive, with a black-and-white Manx cat upon his knee, and a
tame jackdaw hanging in a wicker cage by the window, exactly like a
coloured frontispiece in a Christmas number of a magazine.

It was a tremendous blow to the school when the news was circulated
that old Wilkinson had received notice to quit his cottage. The girls
were filled with indignation against his landlord. The fact that that
long-suffering farmer had received no rent for the last six months,
and badly required the cottage as a billet for lady workers on the
land, went for nothing in the estimation of the Grange inmates.
Wilkinson, so they considered, was a persecuted old man, about to be
evicted from his home, and a very proper object for sympathy and
consideration.

"Something's got to be done for him--that's flat!" declared Raymonde.
"You don't suppose we can allow him to be taken to the workhouse? It's
unthinkable! He'd break his poor old heart. And we'd miss him so,
too. Won't the landlord change his mind and let him stay?"

"Miss Gibbs went to see him about it," vouchsafed Aveline agitatedly,
"and she came back and shook her head, and said she couldn't but feel
that the man was only doing his duty, and women were wanted on the
land, and must have a place to live in, and someone had to be
sacrificed."

"He's a victim of the war!" sighed Morvyth. "One of those outside
victims who don't get Victoria Crosses and military funerals."

"He hasn't come to a funeral yet!" bristled Raymonde. "The old boy
looks good for another ten years or so. D