d down in his corner with the _Morning Post_. But he could
not concentrate his attention on the morning news. This strange
costume in which he was clothed seemed unreal, monstrous; no longer
the natty dress in which he had been proud to prink the night before,
but a nightmare, Nessus-like investiture, signifying some abominable
burning doom.

The train swept him into a world that was upside down.

CHAPTER VII

Those were proud days for Peggy. She went about Durdlebury with her
head in the air, and her step was as martial as though she herself
wore the King's uniform, and she regarded the other girls of the town
with a defiant eye. If only she could discover, she thought, the
sender of the abominable feather! In Timpany's drapery establishment
she raked the girls at the counter with a searching glance. At the
cathedral services she studied the demure faces of her contemporaries.
Now that Doggie was a soldier she held the anonymous exploit to be
cowardly and brutal. What did people know of the thousand and one
reasons that kept eligible young men out of the Army? What had they
known of Marmaduke? As soon as the illusion of his life had been
dispelled, he had marched away with as gallant a tread as anybody; and
though Doggie had kept to himself his shrinkings and his terrors, she
knew that what to the average hardily bred young man was a gay
adventure, was to him an ordeal of considerable difficulty. She longed
for his first leave, so that she could parade him before the town, in
the event of there being a lurking sceptic who still refused to
believe that he had joined the Army.

Conspicuous in the drawing-room, framed in silver, stood a large
full-length photograph of Doggie in his new uniform.

She wrote to him daily, chronicling the little doings of the town, at
times reviling it for its dullness. Dad, on numberless committees, was
scarcely ever in the house, except for hurried meals. Most of the
pleasant young clergy had gone. Many of the girls had gone too:
Dorothy Bruce to be a probationer in a V.A.D. hospital. If Durdlebury
were not such a rotten out-of-the-world place, the infirmary would be
full of wounded soldiers, and she could do her turn at nursing. As
things were, she could only knit socks for Tommies and a silk khaki
tie for her own boy. But when everybody was doing their bit, these
occupations were not enough to prevent her feeling a little slacker.
He would have to do the patriotic work for b