y things they wanted to speak about, and yet
the words would not come. For on the morrow, early in the morning, at
day-dawn even, when the birds should be yet only half awake in their
nests, while Darby and Joan should be still sleeping in their cribs
disturbed by neither dream nor fear, their father was to leave them. He
must be up and away to join the company of brave fellows who called him
captain, and with them go aboard the big transport ship that even then
was lying at anchor in Southampton Water, waiting to carry them, with
many of their comrades, away, away--far, far away!--over the sweeping,
separating sea, to fight for their beloved Queen and country amidst
perils and privations on the wide, lonely veldts of South Africa.

How were they to live without him--the dear, darling daddy who had been
to them father and mother for almost a year now? And that is a long time
to little children, a large slice from the lives of such mites as Joan
and Darby Dene. Darby was not quite seven, with thick, short brown hair
and great gray eyes. Joan was five. Her hair was long and curly; it had
a funny trick of falling over her face in golden tangles, from which her
eyes, velvety as the heart of a pansy, blinked out solemnly like stars
from the purple darkness of a summer night: while her cheeks were
exactly the colour of the China roses that bloomed so freely, month in
month out, about the porch at Grannie Dene's front door.

Their names were not really Darby and Joan. They had been baptized Guy
and Doris; but their father had begun to call them Darby and Joan when
they were tiny toddlers, just for fun, because they were such devoted
chums; and after a time nearly every one called them by these names,
even their mother. Only grannie, who was very much of an invalid, and
whom in consequence they did not often visit, kept to Guy and Doris. But
for that they should soon have forgotten that these charming names were
actually theirs.

Their mother had died about nine months previously, just before
Christmas, shortly after the birth of baby Eric, the wee, fragile
brother whom Perry, the careful, kindly nurse, seemed always hushing to
sleep and rarely permitted the others to touch. Already Joan had ceased
to remember her mother, except at odd times, and in a hazy sort of
fashion; and to Darby it appeared quite a great while since that day
when he had heard the servants say to each other that their mistress was
dead.

It was a brig