“Disgraceful!” assented Mrs Dare. “I’m rejoiced to know that your common-sense condemns that kind of thing, and I hope you’ll have a real good time and come back all the better for it.” “I will, mum. You bet your boots on that!” And she did. She journeyed down to Margate in a ‘Ladies Only’ third-class carriage, and bore herself with such dignity that her fellow-travellers were divided as to whether she kept a stylish public somewhere in the West End or a Superior Servants’ Registry Office. She picked out a cheap but adequate lodging, she revelled in all the joys of Margate, ate many winkles, and went to ‘the pictures’ at least once each day, and the whole grand excursion, fares included, totalled up to no more than thirty shillings,--“an’ the best investment ever I made in me life,” she told Mrs Dare over her scrubbing brush, the following week, “an’ I’m thinkin’ I’ll run down for th’ week end now and again, if so be’s this blessed war keeps on a bit.” Mrs Dare found it really refreshing, amid the abounding troubles of the times, to come across someone who had not only no fault to find with them, but was actually, by reason of them, enjoying quite unexpected prosperity. For her own heart had been heavy enough in those days, what with the Colonel’s illness and her husband’s very natural depression as to the future outlook. He had come in one night, some time before, in a state of most justifiable exasperation. And yet the whole thing was so amazingly impudent that in telling his wife of it he could scarce forbear a grim smile. At the same time it was an eye-opener as to the truculent immorality of the firms he had been dealing with for years past in the most perfect good faith, and he vowed he would never forget it. Two of his best customers, one at Hamburg and the other at Frankfort, owing him between them close on £5000 had coolly sent him word that, as no money could be sent out of the country, they had invested the amounts due to him in the German War Loan and would hold the scrip, and the interest as it accrued, in his name. Both principal and interest would be paid in due course, that is to say--when victory crowned the German arms. It took Mrs Dare some time to realise that it was not merely a distorted German form of practical joke. But her husband assured her that it was not. “I had heard of it being done,” he said bitterly. “But I never expected either Stein or Rheinberg would play so low a game on me. I’ve turned over hundreds of thousands of pounds with both of them, and now--this! It’s damnable!” “Perhaps the Government forced them to it.” “It’s dirty low business anyway, and it won’t make for German credit when things settle down again.” But presently there came to him a bit of good fortune which made him feel almost himself again.