to cover the table. Then the children made
forts and ditches, and brought in sprigs of geranium and calceolaria and
box and yew and made trees and ambushes and hedges. It was a lovely
battlefield, and would have melted the heart of anyone but a
nursery-governess.

But she just said, 'What a disgusting mess! How naughty you are!' and
fetched a brush and swept the field of glory away into the dustpan.
There was only just time to save the lives of the soldiers.

And then Cecily put the knife-box back without saying what it had been
used for, and the knives were put into it, so that at dinner everything
tasted of earth, and the grit got between people's teeth, so that they
could not eat their mutton or potatoes or cabbage, or even their gravy.

This, of course, was entirely Miss Simpshall's fault. If she had not
behaved as she did Bertie or Eva would have remembered to clean out the
knife-box. As it was, the story of the field of glory came out over the
gritty mutton and things, and father sent all the battlefield-makers to
bed.

Molly was out of this. She was staying with Aunt Eliza, who was kind, if
refined. She was to come back the next day. But as mother was on her way
to the station to meet Aunt Maria for a day's shopping, she met a
telegraph boy, who gave her a telegram from Aunt Eliza saying:

'Am going to Palace to-day instead of to-morrow. Fetch
Marie.--ELISE.'

So mother fetched her from Aunt Eliza's flat in Kensington and took her
shopping with Aunt Maria. There were hours of shopping in hot, stuffy
shops full of tired shop-people and angry ladies, and even the new hat
and jacket and the strawberry ice at the pastrycook's in Oxford Street
did not make up to Molly for that tiresome day.

Still, she was out of the battlefield row. Only as she did not know that
it could not comfort her.

When Aunt Maria had been put into her train, mother and Molly went home.
As their cab stopped, Miss Simpshall rushed out between the two dusty
laburnums by the gate.

'Don't come in!' said Miss Simpshall wildly.

'My dear Miss Simpshall----' said mother.

The hair of the nursery-governess waved wildly in the evening breeze.
She shut the ornamental iron gate in mother's face.

'Don't come in!' said Miss Simpshall again. 'You shan't, you
mustn't----'

'Don't talk nonsense,' said mother, looking very white. 'Have you gone
mad?'

Miss Simpshall said she hadn't.

'But what's the matter?' said mother.

'Me