turer verdict on the whole
European situation; "_Verdammte Bummelei!_"

"Go," said Mr. Britling to the taxi driver.

"_Auf Wiedersehen_, Herr Heinrich!"

"_Auf Wiedersehen!_"

"Good-bye, Herr Heinrich!"

"Good luck, Herr Heinrich!"

The taxi started with a whir, and Herr Heinrich passed out of the gates
and along the same hungry road that had so recently consumed Mr. Direck.
"Give him a last send-off," cried Teddy. "One, Two, Three! _Auf
Wiedersehen!_"

The voices, gruff and shrill, sounded raggedly together. The dog-rose
hedge cut off the sight of the little face. Then the pink head bobbed up
again. He was standing up and waving the panama hat. Careless of
sunstroke....

Then Herr Heinrich had gone altogether....

"Well," said Mr. Britling, turning away.

"I do hope they won't hurt him," said a visitor.

"Oh, they won't put a youngster like that in the fighting line," said
Mr. Britling. "He's had no training yet. And he has to wear glasses. How
can he shoot? They'll make a clerk of him."

"He hasn't packed at all," said Mrs. Britling to her husband. "Just come
up for an instant and peep at his room. It's--touching."

It was touching.

It was more than touching; in its minute, absurd way it was symbolical
and prophetic, it was the miniature of one small life uprooted.

The door stood wide open, as he had left it open, careless of all the
little jealousies and privacies of occupation and ownership. Even the
windows were wide open as though he had needed air; he who had always so
sedulously shut his windows since first he came to England. Across the
empty fireplace stretched the great bough of oak he had brought in for
Billy, but now its twigs and leaves had wilted, and many had broken off
and fallen on the floor. Billy's cage stood empty upon a little table in
the corner of the room. Instead of packing, the young man had evidently
paced up and down in a state of emotional elaboration; the bed was
disordered as though he had several times flung himself upon it, and his
books had been thrown about the room despairfully. He had made some
little commencements of packing in a borrowed cardboard box. The violin
lay as if it lay in state upon the chest of drawers, the drawers were
all partially open, and in the middle of the floor sprawled a pitiful
shirt of blue, dropped there, the most flattened and broken-hearted of
garments. The fireplace contained an unsuccessful pencil sketch of a
girl's face, torn acr