Miss Mitten was sixty-seven if she was a day, but never admitted it even at census-time. She was an eminently early-Victorian little lady, had taught in a very select ladies’ school, and had written several perfectly harmless little books, which at the time had obtained some slight vogue but had long since been forgotten by every one except the ‘eminent authoress’ herself, as some small newspaper had once unforgettably dubbed her. She was as small and neat as the Colonel himself, and in spite of the ample living at Oakdene her slim little figure never showed any signs of even comfortable rotundity. She was in fact sparely made, and the later fat years had never succeeded in making good the deficiencies of the many preceding lean ones. She wore the neatest of little gray curls at the side of her head, and, year in year out, they never varied by so much as one single hair. She was very gentle, a much better housekeeper than might have been expected, and was partial to the black silk dresses and black silk open-work mittens of the days of long ago. The youngsters called her Auntie Mitt., and the Colonel they called Uncle Tony. She alone of all their world invariably addressed the Colonel as ‘Sir Anthony,’ and in her case only he raised no objection, since he saw that she thereby obtained some peculiar little inward satisfaction. Alma, the eldest girl, was, in this year of grace 1914, twenty-six, though you would never have thought it to look at her. She was a tall handsome girl, dark, as were all the Luards, and three years before this, had suddenly shaken off the frivolities of life and gone in for nursing, with an ardour and steady persistence which had surprised her family and greatly pleased the Colonel, whose still-keen, dark eyes twinkled understandingly and approvingly. Raglan--Ray to all his friends--was twenty-four, two inches taller than Alma, broad of shoulder and deep of chest,--he had pulled stroke in his College eight, and his clean-shaven face, with its firm mouth and jaw and level brows, was good to look upon. He was studying the honourable profession of the law and intended to reach the Woolsack or know the reason why. Partly as a sop to the martial spirit of Uncle Tony, and also because he had deemed it a duty--though he speedily found it a pleasure also--he had joined the Territorials and was at this time a first lieutenant in the London Scottish, and a very fine figure he made in the kilt and sporran. Victoria, who so narrowly escaped being Balaclava, was nineteen and the political heretic of the family. She was an ardent Home-Ruler, a Suffragist, a Land-Reformer, played an almost faultless game at tennis, could give the Colonel 30 at billiards and beat him 100 up with ten to spare; and held a ten handicap on the links. She was in fact very advanced, very full of energy and good spirits, and frankly set on getting out of life every enjoyable thrill it could be made to yield.