ou are aware that Alick once spent a long
leave in Germany. Although I miss him, I should be glad to think he is
doing something useful just now. But of course I shouldn't at all have
liked the thought of his beginning again to fight--and at his time of
life!"

"I suppose a soldier is never too old to want to fight,"--but even while
she spoke, Mrs. Otway felt as if she were saying something rather trite
and foolish. She was a little bit afraid of the old lady, and as she sat
down her cheeks grew even hotter than the walking had made them, for she
suddenly remembered Major Guthrie's legacy.

"Yes, that's true, of course! And for the first two or three days of
last week I could see that Alick was very much upset, in fact horribly
depressed, by this War. But I pretended to take no notice of it--it's
always better to do that with a man! It's never the slightest use being
sympathetic--it only makes people more miserable. However, last Friday,
after getting a telegram, he became quite cheerful and like his old self
again. He wouldn't admit, even to me, that he had heard from the War
Office. But I put two and two together! Of course, as he is in the
Reserve, he may find himself employed on some form of home defence. I
could see that Alick thinks that the Germans will probably try and land
in England--invade it, in fact, as the Normans did." The old lady
smiled. "It's an amusing idea, isn't it?"

"But surely the fleet's there to prevent that!" said Mrs. Otway. She was
surprised that so sensible a man as Major Guthrie--her opinion of him
had gone up very much this last week--should imagine such a thing as
that a landing by the Germans on the English coast was possible.

"Oh, but he says there are at least a dozen schemes of English invasion
pigeonholed in the German War Office, and by now they've doubtless had
them all out and examined them. He has always said there is a very good
landing-place within twenty miles of here--a place Napoleon selected!"

A pleasant interlude was provided by tea, and as Mrs. Guthrie, her old
hand shaking a little, poured out a delicious cup for her visitor, and
pressed on her a specially nice home-made cake, Mrs. Otway began to
think that in the past she had perhaps misjudged Major Guthrie's
agreeable, lively mother.

Suddenly Mrs. Guthrie fixed on her visitor the penetrating blue eyes
which were so like those of her son, and which were indeed the only
feature of her very handsome face she had