ing to the colour of their prevailing
uniforms. Meanwhile Herr Heinrich confessed almost promiscuously the
complication of his distresses by a hitherto unexpected emotional
interest in the daughter of the village publican. She was a placid
receptive young woman named Maud Hickson, on whom the young man had, it
seemed, imposed the more poetical name of Marguerite.

"Often we have spoken together, oh yes, often," he assured Mrs.
Britling. "And now it must all end. She loves flowers, she loves birds.
She is most sweet and innocent. I have taught her many words in German
and several times I have tried to draw her in pencil, and now I must go
away and never see her any more."

His implicit appeal to the whole literature of Teutonic romanticism
disarmed Mrs. Britling's objection that he had no business whatever to
know the young woman at all.

"Also," cried Herr Heinrich, facing another aspect of his distresses,
"how am I to pack my things? Since I have been here I have bought many
things, many books, and two pairs of white flannel trousers and some
shirts and a tin instrument that I cannot work, for developing privately
Kodak films. All this must go into my little portmanteau. And it will
not go into my little portmanteau!

"And there is Billy! Who will now go on with the education of Billy?"

The hands of fate paused not for Herr Heinrich's embarrassments and
distresses. He fretted from his room downstairs and back to his room, he
went out upon mysterious and futile errands towards the village inn, he
prowled about the garden. His head and face grew pinker and pinker; his
eyes were flushed and distressed. Everybody sought to say and do kind
and reassuring things to him.

"Ach!" he said to Teddy; "you are a civilian. You live in a free
country. It is not your war. You can be amused at it...."

But then Teddy was amused at everything.

Something but very dimly apprehended at Matching's Easy, something
methodical and compelling away in London, seemed to be fumbling and
feeling after Herr Heinrich, and Herr Heinrich it appeared was
responding. Sunday's post brought the decision.

"I have to go," he said. "I must go right up to London to-day. To an
address in Bloomsbury. Then they will tell me how to go to Germany. I
must pack and I must get the taxi-cab from the junction and I must go.
Why are there no trains on the branch line on Sundays for me to go by
it?"

At lunch he talked politics. "I am entirely opposed to t