Miss Gordon was doing Government war work in Harlingden. She had taken her certificate for domestic economy at a training college in London, and now held a post in the canteen department of a huge munition factory. The place lay a few miles out of the town. Mary and Avelyn first caught a tram-car, which whisked them along an uninteresting stretch of shabby road, and put them down at a corner where three ways met. It was a tolerably long walk from there to the munition works. The neighbourhood was dingy, with rows of small cottages and second-rate shops, and tall chimneys or furnaces in the background. The Chayton Government factory was a colony in itself, with a special railway line out from Harlingden. The station platform marked its boundary. After that came rows and rows of munition cottages--little wooden houses, each containing three rooms and a bath-room, all exactly similar except for the numbers on the doors. The girls passed these, and went in the direction of the hostels. At the great gate of the works stood a sentry on duty, who asked them their names, residence, and whom they were going to visit, and entered these particulars in a book before he would admit them. "It's all right. Miss Gordon told me that she was expecting you," he volunteered, as he opened the gate for them. Feeling rather as if they were going into prison, Mary and Avelyn stepped forward, and found themselves in a big enclosure fenced with barbed wire. Each hostel was a large, separate bungalow building, and there were also several recreation halls. Patches of ground planted with cabbages lay between. It all looked very new and unfinished, something like the pictures of mushroom cities in America. In front of them loomed the canteen, an enormous red-brick structure with a corrugated-iron roof. Mary enquired at the office for Miss Gordon, and her friend soon made her appearance. "I'm so glad you've found your way here! Come in, and I'll show you everything. It's a queer place, isn't it?" "I should get lost in it!" declared Mary. "Oh! it's wonderful how soon you learn to find your way about. What would you like to see first? The canteen? We shall just have time to go round before tea, then we'll do the hostel afterwards." Avelyn trotted off with great interest in the wake of Mary Lascelles and Miss Gordon. She was going to see a new side of life, and learn what some women were doing to help the war. Out at the front our boys were fighting for Britain's honour, but their heroism would be of no avail if the hands slacked that forged the weapons at home. The workers who made the munitions, and those who toiled to feed the workers and keep them fit, were taking their share of the burden, and, in however small and obscure a way, were pushing the world on towards the victory of Right over Might.