Twenty-four hours later, Nelly arrived. As Hester received her from the coach, and walked with her arm round the tiny waist to the cottage by the bend of the river, where tea beside the sun-flecked stream was set for the traveller, the older friend was at once startled and reassured. Reassured--because, after these six months, Nelly could laugh once more, and her step was once more firm and normal; and startled, by the new and lonely independence she perceived in her frail visitor. Nelly was in black again, with a small black hat from which her widow's veil fell back over her shoulders. The veil, the lawn collar and cuffs, together with her childish slightness, and the curls on her temples and brow that she had tried in vain to straighten, made her look like a little girl masquerading. And yet, in truth, what struck her hostess was the sad maturity for which she seemed to have exchanged her old clinging ways. She spoke, for the first time, as one who was mistress of her own life and its issues; with a perfectly clear notion of what there was for her to do. She had made up her mind, she told Hester, to take work offered her in one of the new special hospitals for nervous cases which were the product of the war. 'They think I have a turn for it, and they are going to train me. Isn't it kind and dear of them?' 'But I am told it is the most exhausting form of nursing there is,' said Hester wondering. 'Are you quite sure you can stand it?' 'Try me!' said Nelly, with a strange brightness of look. Then reaching out a hand she slipped it contentedly into her friend's. 'Hester!--isn't it strange what we imagine about ourselves--and what is really true? I thought the first weeks that I was in hospital, I _must_ break down. I never dreamt that anyone could feel so tired--so deadly ill--and yet go on. And then one began, little by little, to get hardened,--of course I'm only now beginning to feel that!--and it seems like being born again, with a quite new body, that one can make--yes, _make_--do as one likes. That's what the soldiers tell me--about _their_ training. And they wonder at it, as I do.' 'My dear, you're horribly thin,' interrupted Hester. 'Oh, not too thin!' said Nelly, complacently. Then she lifted up her eyes suddenly, and saw the lake in a dazzle of light, and Silver How, all purple, as of old; yet another family of wild duck swimming where the river issued from the lake; and just beyond, the white corner of the house where she and George had spent their few days of bliss. Slowly, the eyes filled with brimming tears. She threw off her hat and veil, and slipping to the grass, she laid her head against her friend's knee, and there was a long silence. Hester broke it at last. 'I want you to come a little way up the fell, and look at a daffodil field. We'll leave a message, and Cicely can follow us there.' And then she added, not without trepidation--'and I asked her to bring William, if he had time.'