o get well--not too
quickly! She could not make up her mind to wish it--to pray for it--it
seemed like tempting Providence. But how she had envied a young couple
whom she sometimes met walking on the Ambleside road!--a young private
of one of the Border regiments, with a bandaged arm, and his sweetheart.
Once--with that new free-masonry which the war has brought about, she
had stopped to speak to them. The boy had been quite ready to talk about
his wound. It had seemed nothing at first--just a fragment of
shrapnel--he had scarcely known he was hit. But abscess after abscess
had formed--a leading nerve had been injured--it might be months before
he could use it again. And meanwhile the plain but bright-faced girl
beside him was watching over him; he lodged with her parents as his own
were dead; and they were to be married soon. No chance of his going out
again! The girl's father would give him work in his garage. They had the
air of persons escaped from shipwreck and ashamed almost of their own
secret happiness, while others were still battling with and sinking in
the waves.

* * * * *

A flowery lodge, a long drive through green stretches of park, with a
heather fell for background--and then the motor, leaving to one side a
huge domed pile with the Union Jack floating above it, ran through a
wood, and drew up in front of Carton Cottage, a low building on the
steps of which stood Sir William Farrell.

'Delighted to see you! Come in, and let Cicely give you some tea.
They'll see to your luggage!'

He led in Nelly, and Bridget followed, glancing from side to side, with
an eye shrewdly eager, an eye that took in and appraised all it saw. A
cottage indeed! It had been built by Sir William's father, for his only
sister, a maiden lady, to whom he was much attached. 'Aunt Sophy' had
insisted on a house to herself, being a person of some ruggedness and
eccentricity of character and averse to any sort of dependence on other
people's ways and habits. But she had allowed her brother to build and
furnish the cottage for her as lavishly as he pleased, and during his
long widowhood she had been of much help to him in the management of
the huge household at Carton Hall, and in the bringing up of his two
children. After her death, the house had remained empty for some time,
till, six months after the outbreak of war, Farrell had handed over the
Hall to the War Office, and he and his sister had migrated