fast, "we needn't cast down our
eyes and slink by when we meet a Frenchman."

CHAPTER V

The first thing that brought the seriousness of the war home to Doggie
was a letter from John Fox. John Fox, a major in a Territorial
regiment, was mobilized. He regretted that he could not give his
personal attention to the proposed alterations at Denby Hall. Should
the plans be proceeded with in his absence from the office, or would
Mr. Trevor care to wait till the end of the war, which, from the
nature of things, could not last very long? Doggie trotted off to
Peggy. She was greatly annoyed.

"What awful rot!" she cried. "Fox, a major of artillery! I'd just as
soon trust you with a gun. Why doesn't he stick to his architecture?"

"He'd be shot or something if he refused to go," said Doggie. "But why
can't we turn it over to Sir Owen Julius?"

"That old archaeological fossil?"

Peggy, womanlike, forgot that they had approached him in the first
place.

"He'd never begin to understand what we want. Fox hinted as much. Now
Fox is modern and up to date and sympathetic. If I can't have Fox, I
won't have Sir Owen. Why, he's older than Dad! He's decrepit. Can't we
get another architect?"

"Do you think, dear," said Doggie, "that, in the circumstances, it
would be a nice thing to do?"

She flashed a glance at him. She had woven no young girl's romantic
illusions around Marmaduke. Should necessity have arisen, she could
have furnished you with a merciless analysis of his character. But in
that analysis she would have frankly included a very fine sense of
honour. If he said a thing wasn't quite nice--well, it wasn't quite
nice.

"I suppose it wouldn't," she admitted. "We shall have to wait. But
it's a rotten nuisance all the same."

Hundreds of thousands of not very intelligent, but at the same time by
no means unpatriotic, people, like Peggy, at the beginning of the war
thought trivial disappointments rotten nuisances. We had all waxed too
fat during the opening years of the twentieth century, and, not having
a spiritual ideal in God's universe, we were in danger of perishing
from Fatty Degeneration of the Soul. As it was, it took a year or more
of war to cure us.

It took Peggy quite a month to appreciate the meaning of the
mobilization of Major Fox, R.F.A. A brigade of Territorial artillery
flowed over Durdlebury, and the sacred and sleepy meadows became a
mass of guns and horse-lines and men in khaki, and waggon