"Well, indeed to goodness!" said Mrs. Jones, and suffered herself to be led to a waiting car in which, to the visible astonishment of an elderly chauffeur, she and Maggie Ann were placed. "There's kind you are, Mum." "Not at all," said the grey-haired lady as the car started. "I have very few servants now, and there are plenty of spare servants' rooms. I am grateful to Providence for bringing us together into the same railway carriage," she continued simply. "I--I am so glad to be able to help"--her hands twisted together on her lap with a little nervous, rather pathetic gesture--"another mother." The visitors supped in a vast spotless servants' hall, where the floor was of polished linoleum in black and white squares, and the electric light shone down on burnished copper pans and scoured woodwork. Cook, a stout sentimentalist, afterwards bade the old woman draw a chair to the fire and together they brewed strong tea. "I've buried two husbands," she said, "but never a bairn have I borne. I don't know but what you're to be envied, Mrs. Jones. Her ladyship, she gave her only son, same's what you did, and her heart is broken. But she holds her head the prouder 'There's worse things than dyin' for the right,' she sez." Cook dabbed at her eyes with a huge pocket-handkerchief. Janet, the trim housemaid, was interested in the Navy for personal reasons in which a good-looking signalman "on Jellicoe's boat" played a considerable part. She it was, early the following morning, who took Maggie Ann in hand. "Did you ever see such hair wasted?" she said, contemplating Maggie Ann's honey-coloured tangled thatch. "Even if you are going to your brother's funeral..." and bade her comb it, and dressed it with such cunning that the pale slatternly girl stood silent, staring before the mirror. The generous enthusiasm of the woman who is fond of her sex seized Janet. "Here," she said. "Put this blouse on; it's one her ladyship gave me. I don't want it. And see if these boots will fit you.... Oh! what stockings--wait a minute." Drawers were rummaged, bits of lace and crape unearthed, the married sister's hat was pounced upon and underwent a swift metamorphosis in Janet's nimble fingers. "There!" she said at length. "Why, I believe you're pretty!" Maggie Ann turned from the glass with her hazel eyes aglow, and a faint colour creeping towards the cheek bones set wide apart in her pale face. 2 Towards dawn a British Destroyer limped into the little harbour embraced by one flank of the headland where the coastguard station stood. One of the blades of the Destroyer's propeller was missing, and the "A" bracket, designed to support the shaft, threatened to decline any further responsibility in the matter.