lf and Bridget. Why would Bridget always sit alone in that chilly
outside room, which even with a large fire seemed to Nelly
uninhabitable? She tried to woo her sister, by all the small devices in
her power.

'Why won't you come and sit with me a bit, Bridget? I'm so dull all
alone!'--she would say when, after luncheon or high tea, Bridget showed
signs of immediately shutting herself up again.

'I can't. I must do some work.'

'Do tell me what you're doing, Bridget?'

'Oh, you wouldn't understand.'

'Well, other people don't always think me a born idiot!'--Nelly would
say, not without resentment. 'I really could understand, Bridget, if
you'd try.'

'I haven't the time.'

'And you're killing yourself with so many hours of it. Why should you
slave so? If you only would come and help me sometimes with the Red
Cross work, I'd do any needlework for you, that you wanted.'

'You know I hate needlework.'

'You're not doing anything--not _anything_--for the war, Bridget!' Nelly
would venture, wistfully, at last.

'There are plenty of people to do things for the war. I didn't want the
war! Nobody asked my opinion.'

And presently the door would shut, and Nelly would be left to watch the
torrents of rain outside, and to endeavour by reading and drawing, by
needlework and the society of her small friend Tommy, whenever she could
capture him, to get through the day. She pined for Hester, but Hester
was doing Welfare work in a munition factory at Leeds, and could not be
got at.

So there she sat alone, brooding and planning, too timid to talk to
Bridget of her own schemes, and, in her piteous indecision, longing
guiltily for Farrell's return. Meanwhile she had written to several
acquaintances who were doing V.A.D. work in various voluntary hospitals,
to ask for information.

Suddenly, after the rain came frost and north wind--finally snow; the
beginning in the north of the fiercest winter Western Europe has known
for many years. Over heights and dales alike spread the white Leveller,
melting by day in the valley bottoms, and filling up his wastage by
renewed falls at night. Nelly ventured out sometimes to look at the high
glories of Wetherlam and the Pikes, under occasional gleams of sun.
Bridget never put a foot out of doors, except when she went to the
garden gate to look for the postman in the road, and take the letters
from him.

At last, one evening, when after a milder morning a bitter blast from
the north s