The blinds were drawn, the lamps were lit and the fire was burning brightly. I was reading an evening paper--we get the 5.30 edition at the moment of publication, though we are thirty miles from London--and I had just found Prezymyzle (my own pronunciation) on the map for the thousandth time. Helen says that quite in the early days of the war she was told it ought to be pronounced Perimeeshy, but that seems impossible. Rosie declares for Prozmeel. Still she isn't very confident about it. One thing seems certain: when the Russians take this jaw-cracking town they will pronounce it quite differently from the Austrian form, whatever that may be. Just think of what happened to Lemberg. There appeared to be a kind of finality about that, but no sooner were the Russians in it than it turned into Lwow. After that anything might happen to Przemysl. However, there were the three of us sitting in the library. I was helping the common cause with the evening paper and the map, and Helen and Rosie were knitting away like mad at khaki mufflers for Lady FRENCH. Click-click went the needles; the youthful fingers moved with incredible deftness and celerity, and line after line was added by each executant to her already enormous pile. There had been a long silence, and the time for breaking it seemed to have come. "Well done, both of you," I said. "You really are getting on to-day. A week ago I thought you'd never get finished, and now----" I waved my hand encouragingly at the two heaps of wool-work. "There," said Helen, "you've made me drop one." "Pick it up again," I said with enthusiasm. "What were girls made for if not to pick up dropped stitches? But tell me," I added, "what would happen if you didn't pick it up?" "My soldier," said Helen gloomily, "would go into the trenches and, instead of having a muffler, he would suddenly find himself coming undone all over him. Do you think he would like that?" "No," I said, "he wouldn't. No soldier could possibly like a thing of that sort when he's got to fight Germans." "I wonder," put in Rosie, "what _my_ soldier will be like. I think I should like him to have a moustache--yes, I'm sure I want him to have a moustache." "He'll have a moustache all right," said Helen, who is practical rather than dreamy. "And he'll have whiskers, too, and a beard as long as your arm. Do you think people have time to shave when they're in trenches?" "Well, anyhow," said Rosie, "both our soldiers will be very brave men." "That," said Helen, "is quite certain. Let's put in some good hard stitches to thank them for their bravery." There was a short silence while this operation was performed with great zeal. The fingers flew through their complicated task and the web seemed to grow visibly.