e hat so much, Nelly!--and that blue cloak is just
ripping! And what's that you've got at your waist--a silver
buckle?--yes! I gave it you. Mind you wear it, when I'm away, and tell
me you're wearing it--then I can fancy it.'

'Will you ever have time--to think of me--George?'

She bent towards him.

He laughed.

'Well, not when I'm going over the parapet to attack the Boches.
Honestly, one thinks of nothing then but how one can get one's men
across. But you won't come off badly, my little Nell--for
thoughts--night or day. And you mustn't think of us too sentimentally.
It's quite true that men write wonderful letters--and wonderful verse
too--men of all ranks--things you'd never dream they could write. I've
got a little pocket-book full that I've collected. I've left it in
London, but I'll show you some day. But bless you, nobody _talks_ about
their feelings at the front. We're a pretty slangy lot in the trenches,
and when we're in billets, we read novels and rag each other--and
_sleep_--my word, we do sleep!'

He rolled on his back, and drew his hat over his eyes a moment, for
even in the fresh mountain air the June sun was fierce. Nelly sat still,
watching him, as he had watched her--all the young strength and
comeliness of the man to whom she had given herself.

And as she did so there came swooping down upon her, like the blinding
wings of a Fury, the remembrance of a battle picture she had seen that
morning: a bursting shell--limp figures on the ground. Oh not
George--not _George_--never! The agony ran through her, and her fingers
gripped the turf beside her. Then it passed, and she was silently proud
that she had been able to hide it. But it had left her pale and
restless. She sprang up, and they went along the high path leading to
Grasmere and Langdale.

Presently at the top of the little neck which separates Rydal from
Grasmere they came upon an odd cavalcade. In front walked an elderly
lady, with a huge open bag slung round her, in which she carried an
amazing load of the sphagnum moss that English and Scotch women were
gathering at that moment all over the English and Scotch mountains for
the surgical purposes of the war. Behind her came a pony, with a boy.
The pony was laden with the same moss, so was the boy. The lady's face
was purple with exertion, and in her best days she could never have been
other than plain; her figure was shapeless. She stopped the pony as she
neared the Sarratts, and address