dish though it sounds."

"Bong Song!" interposed Mrs. Cavendish flippantly. "As----" She broke
off abruptly. "There I go again! There's no doubt about it: I have
got a liver ... I think I'll go home and write to Bill. That always
does me good."

That tea-party was the first of many similar informal gatherings of
grass-widows in poky rooms and cottage parlours. They were quite young
for the most part, and many were pretty. They drank each other's tea
and talked about their husbands and the price of things, and
occasionally of happenings in an incredibly remote past when one hunted
and went to dances and bought pretty frocks.

It was Etta Clavering who conducted Betty round the village shops on
the morning after her arrival, where she was introduced to the small
Scottish shopkeeper getting rich quick, and the unedifying revelation
of naked greed cringing behind every tiny counter.

Through Eileen Cavendish, moreover, she secured the goodwill of a
washerwoman.

"My dear," said her benefactress, "money won't tempt them. They've got
beyond that. They've got to like you before they will wring out a
stocking for you. But I'll take you to the Widow Twankey; I'm one of
her protegees, and she shows her affection for me by feeling for my
ribs with her first two fingers to punctuate her remarks with prods.
It always makes me hysterical. She has only got two teeth, and they
don't meet."

So the Widow Twankey was sought out, and Betty stood and looked
appealingly humble while Etta Cavendish suffered her ribs to be prodded
in a good cause, and the Widow agreed to "wash for" Betty at rates that
would have brought blushes to the cheeks of a Parisian _blanchisseuse
de fin_.

With Mrs. Gascoigne, Betty explored the heathery moors where the
distraught pee-wits were already nesting, and the cool, clean air blew
down from the snowy Grampians, bracing the walkers like a draught of
iced wine. They even climbed some of the nearer hills, forcing their
way through the tangled spruce-branches and undergrowth to the summit,
from where the distant North Sea itself was visible, lying like a grey
menace to their peace.

They would return from these expeditions by the path down the glen that
wound close to the brawling river; here, in the evenings, sometimes
with an unexpectedness embarrassing to both parties, they met some of
the reunited couples whom Eileen Cavendish found it hard to contemplate
unmoved; occasionally the finger