She knows about the telegram. She thought I was a
great goose to be so anxious. She's making an index now--for the book!'

'The psychology book?'

'Yes!' A pause--then Nelly looked round, flushing.

'I can't talk to Bridget you see--about George--or the war. She just
thinks the world's mad--that it's six to one and half a dozen to the
other--that it doesn't matter at all who wins--so long of course as the
Germans don't come here. And as for me, if I was so foolish as to marry
a soldier in the middle of the war, why I must just take the
consequences--grin and bear it!'

Her tone and look showed that in her clinging way she had begun to
claim the woman beside her as a special friend, while Hester Martin's
manner towards her bore witness that the claim excited a warm
response--that intimacy and affection had advanced rapidly since George
Sarratt's departure.

'Why do you put up with it?' said Miss Martin, sharply. 'Couldn't you
get some cousin--some friend to stay with you?'

Nelly shook her head. 'George wanted me to. But I told him I couldn't.
It would mean a quarrel. I could never quarrel with Bridget.'

Miss Martin laughed indignantly. 'Why not--if she makes you miserable?'

'I don't know. I suppose I'm afraid of her. And besides'--the words
came reluctantly--: 'she does a lot for me. I _ought_ to be very
grateful!'

Yes, Hester Martin did know that, in a sense, Bridget did 'a lot' for
her younger sisters. It was not many weeks since she had made their
acquaintance, but there had been time for her to see how curiously
dependent young Mrs. Sarratt was on Miss Cookson. There was no real
sympathy between them; nor could Miss Martin believe that there was ever
much sense of kinship. But whenever there was anything to be done
involving any friction with the outside world, Bridget was ready to do
it, while Nelly invariably shrank from it.

For instance, some rather troublesome legal business connected with
Nelly's marriage, and the reinvestment of a small sum of money, had
descended on the young wife almost immediately after George's
departure. She could hardly bring herself to look at the letter. What
did it matter? Let their trustee settle it. To be worrying about it
seemed to be somehow taking her mind from George--to be breaking in on
that imaginative vision of him, and his life in the trenches, which
while it tortured her, yet filled the blank of his absence. So Bridget
did it all--corresponded peremptorily