“I’m not blood-thirsty by nature, but truly I’ve come to the point of longing to see them rent in pieces. It is very horrible, I know, but I can’t help it.” “It’s very human, Mrs Mother. We’ll rend ’em in pieces for you all right, but it’ll take time and some doing.” “And terrible loss,” she said with a sigh. “No gain without loss, and their losses have been awful. There never has been anything like it. How long they can stand it, I don’t know.” “I’ve given up caring for their losses in thinking of our own. I’m growing inhuman.” “Not a bit! Couldn’t--no matter how hard you tried. Now who’s this, I wonder. Some of Auntie Mitt’s old tabbies, I expect. I’ll bolt.” But the door opened and disclosed the maid’s face all alight with excitement as she announced with a jerk, “Please, ma’am,--Sir Anthony,--Mr and Mrs Luard!” and Ray and Lois walked in. The Colonel rushed at them with a shout. Mrs Dare jumped up. And Auntie Mitt almost upset the tea-table into the fire-place. “Well, well, well!--Mr and Mrs Luard! My dear,”--as he kissed Lois heartily,--“This is a great day for us! There,--go to your mother. She’s been aching for you. Ray, my dear boy, you’re a champion. How did you get here? Where have you come from? How are you?”--All which incoherencies testified his feelings better than many set speeches. “I suppose you never got the wire I sent from Montreux, sir?” asked Ray. “Never got a thing, my boy. But Rhenius got home and told us you were wanting money and I’ve been doing my best to get some sent out, but so far it’s been impossible. How did you manage?” So they unfolded the idyl of their great adventure over many cups of tea; each supplementing the other with suddenly remembered intimate little details, the one taking up the running whenever the other ran dry, or out of breath, or stood in need of sustenance. “We spent the night on the boat,” concluded Lois, “with eight hundred others. It was an awful pack and we had to sleep anywhere----” “She slept on a bench on deck, and I lay under the bench, and every bone of me’s sore----” “So are mine,” said Lois, “and it was none too warm----” “Fortunately it didn’t rain, and we managed to get some hot tea early in the morning which bucked us up a bit. But it’s not an experience I’d care to repeat--not just that part of it, I mean.” “Now tell us all the news,” begged Lois. “We’ve been in the wilderness for a month and we know practically nothing except that we’re at war. How’s everybody? And how are things going?” All that would obviously take much telling, and Auntie Mitt, foreseeing a considerably enlarged party for dinner, disappeared quietly to look after the commissariat.