en, or forgotten, which was more probable still, Joan's exile from
his good graces. After Aunt Janet's funeral, when Joan had spoken to
him rather nervously, suggesting her return to London, he had stared at
her with unfeigned astonishment.

"Back to London," he had said, "whatever for?"

"To get some more work to do," Joan suggested.

His shaggy eyebrows drew together in a frown. "Preposterous notion," he
answered. "I never did agree with it. So long as a girl has a home, what
does she want to work for? Besides, now your aunt is not here, who is
going to look after the house and things?"

The question seemed unanswerable, and since he had apparently forgiven
the past, why should she remind him? She realized, too, that he needed
her. She wrote asking Fanny to send on her things, and settled down to
try and fill her mind and heart, as much as possible, with the daily
round of small duties which are involved in the keeping of a house.

This morning on her way back from the station, having seen Uncle John
into his train for London, she let fat Sally walk a lot of the way. The
country seemed to be asleep; for miles all round she could see across
field after field, not a creature moving, not a soul in sight, only a
little dust round a bend of the road showed where a motor-car had just
passed. It occurred to her that her life had been just like that; the
quiet, seeming, non-existence of the country; a flashing past of life
which left its cloud of dust behind, and then the quiet closing round
her again.

"The daily round, the common task,
Shall furnish all we need to ask."

She hummed it under her breath.

"Room to deny ourselves--"

Perhaps that was the lesson that she had needed to learn, for in the old
days her watchword had been:

"Room to fulfil myself."

If it was not for Uncle John now she would have liked to have gone back
to London and thrown herself into some sort of work. Women would be
needed before long, the papers said, to do the work of the men who must
be sent to the firing-line. But Uncle John was surely the work to her
hand; she would do it with what heart she had, even though the long
hours of sewing or knitting gave her too much time to think.

Sally having been handed over to the stable-boy, Joan betook herself
into the dining-room. Thursday was the day on which the flowers were
done; Mary had already spread the table with newspaper, and collected
the vases from all over the