Until then, the castle was a home to less fortunate buddies
of the owner's sons.

But these were not the tests I mean, neither these nor the courage and
the poise of that family in the face of their terrible loss, nor their
effort to make every one happy and comfortable.

It was an incident at tea time that opened my eyes. The youngest son,
now the only son, came in from a cross-country tramp and brought with
him a pleasant faced young woman whom he introduced as "one of my pals
in the war."

That was enough. Lady R. greeted her as one of the royal blood. The
girl was the daughter of a Manchester plumber. She had done her bit,
and it had been a hard bit, in the war, and now she was stenographer in
a near-by village. Later in the afternoon the story came out. She had
been clerk in the Q. M. corps and after her brother's death she asked
for service near the front, something hard. She got it. The mules in
the supply and ammunition trains must be fed and it was her job to get
hay to a certain division. The girl had ten motor trucks to handle and
twenty men, three of them noncommissioned officers.

After four days, during which trucks had disappeared and mules gone
unfed, she asked the colonel for the rank of first sergeant, with only
enlisted men under her.

Her first official orders were: All trucks must stay together. If one
breaks down, the others will stop and help.

The second day of her new command, she met our young host, who needed a
truck to move supplies and tried to commandeer one of hers. When she
refused, he ordered her. He was a captain.

"I am under orders to get those ten loads of hay to the mules," was her
reply.

"What will you do if I just take one of them?" asked the captain.

"You won't," said the girl confidently.

"I must get a truck," he insisted. "What can you do about it if I take
one of yours?"

"England needs men," she answered. "But if you made it necessary I'd
have to shoot you. If the mules are n't fed, you and other men can't
fight. If you were fit to be a captain, you'd know that."

The young captain told the story himself and his family enjoyed it,
evidently admiring the Manchester lassie, who sat there as red as a
poppy. They did not bend to the plumber's daughter, nor seem to try to
lift her to the altars of their ancient hall.

Every one met on new ground, a ground where human beings had faced death
together. It was sign of a new fellowship, too de