eir
fighting ships in harbour. The Dean of Witanbury, like the vast majority
of his countrymen and countrywomen, still regarded War as a great game
governed by certain well-known rules which both sides, as a matter of
course, would follow and abide by.

The famous cathedral city was doing "quite nicely" in the matter of
recruiting. And the largest local employer of labour, a man who owned a
group of ladies' high-grade boot and shoe factories, generously decided
that he would permit ten per cent. of those of his men who were of
military age to enlist; he actually promised as well to keep their
places open, and to give their wives, or their mothers, as the case
might be, half wages for the first six months of war.

A good many people felt aggrieved when it became known that Lady Bethune
was not going to give her usual August garden party. She evidently did
not hold with the excellent suggestion that England should now take as
her motto "Business as Usual." True, a garden-party is not exactly
business--still, it is one of those pleasures which the great ladies of
a country neighbourhood find it hard to distinguish from duties.

Yes, life went on quite curiously as usual during the second week of the
Great War, and to many of the more well-to-do people of Witanbury, only
brought in its wake a series of agreeable "thrills" and mild
excitements.

Of course this was not quite the case with the inmates of the Trellis
House. Poor old Anna, for instance, very much disliked the process of
Registration. Still, it was made as easy and pleasant to her as
possible, and Mrs. Otway and Rose both accompanied her to the police
station. There, nothing could have been more kindly than the manner of
the police inspector who handed Anna Bauer her "permit." He went to some
trouble in order to explain to her exactly what it was she might and
might not do.

As Anna seldom had any occasion to travel as far as five miles from
Witanbury Close, her registration brought with it no hardship at all.
Still, she was surprised and hurt to find herself described as "an enemy
alien." She could assure herself, even now, that she had no bad feelings
against England--no, none at all!

Though neither her good faithful servant nor her daughter guessed the
fact, Mrs. Otway was the one inmate of the Trellis House to whom the
War, so far, brought real unease. She felt jarred and upset--anxious,
too, as she had never yet been, about her money matters.

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