will."

* * * * *

Rumours soon grew into certainties. It was only too true that the
British Army was now falling back, back, back, fighting a series of what
were called by the unfamiliar name of rearguard actions; and at last
there came the official statement, "Our casualties have been very heavy,
but the exact numbers are not yet known."

After that, as the days went on, Rose Otway began to wear a most
ungirlish look of strain and of suspense; but no one, to her secret
relief, perceived that she looked any different--all the sympathy of the
Close was concentrated on Edith Haworth, for it was known that the
cavalry had been terribly cut up. Still, towards the end of that
dreadful week, Rose's mother suddenly woke up to the fact that Rose had
fallen into the way of walking to the station in order to get the
evening paper from London half an hour before it could reach the Close.

It was their good old Anna who consoled and sustained the girl during
those first days of strain and of suspense. Anna was never tired of
repeating in her comfortable, cosy, easy-going way, that after all very
few soldiers _really_ get killed in battle. She, Anna, had had a
brother, and many of her relations, fighting in 1870, and only one of
them all had been killed.

The old woman kept her own personal feelings entirely to herself--and
indeed those feelings were very mixed. Of course she did not share the
now universal suspense, surprise, and grief, for to her mind it was
quite right and natural that the Germans should beat the English. What
would have been really most disturbing and unnatural would have been if
the English had beaten the Germans!

But even so she was taken aback by the secret, fierce exultation which
Manfred Hegner--she could not yet bring herself to call him Alfred
Head--displayed, when he and she were left for three or four minutes
alone by his wife, Polly.

Since that pleasant evening they had spent together--it now seemed a
long time ago, yet it was barely a fortnight--Anna had fallen into the
way of going to the Stores twice, and even three times, a week, to
supper. Her host flattered her greatly by pointing out that the
information she had given him concerning Major Guthrie and the
Expeditionary Force, as it was oddly called, had been sound. Frankly he
had exclaimed, "As the days went on and nothing was known, I thought you
must have been mistaken, Frau Bauer. But you did me a good