such as being nursed when they were sick, from one who had "German sympathies" was too much for the pride which is in every human being, however humble an inhabitant of Putney. Mrs. Gerhardt's Cockney spirit could support this for herself, but she could not bear it for her children. David came home with a black eye, and would not say why he had got it. Minnie missed her prize at school, though she had clearly won it. That was just after the last German offensive began; but Mrs. Gerhardt refused to see that this was any reason. Little Violet twice put the heart-rending question to her: "Aren't I English, Mummy?" She was answered: "Yes, my dear, of course." But the child obviously remained unconvinced in her troubled mind. And then they took David for the British army. It was that which so upset the applecart in Mrs. Gerhardt that she broke out to her last friend, Mrs. Clirehugh: "I do think it's hard, Eliza. They take his father and keep him there for a dangerous Hun year after year like that; and then they take his boy for the army to fight against him. And how I'm to get on without him I don't know." Little Mrs. Clirehugh, who was Scotch, with a Gloucestershire accent, replied: "Well, we've got to beat them. They're such a wicked lot. I daresay it's 'ard on you, but we've got to beat them." "But _we_ never did nothing," cried Mrs. Gerhardt; "it isn't us that's wicked. We never wanted the war; it's nothing but ruin to him. They did ought to let me have my man, or my boy, one or the other." "You should 'ave some feeling for the Government, Dora; they 'ave to do 'ard things." Mrs. Gerhardt, with a quivering face, had looked at her friend. "I have," she said at last in a tone which implanted in Mrs. Clirehugh's heart the feeling that Dora was "bitter." She could not forget it; and she would flaunt her head at any mention of her former friend. It was a blow to Mrs. Gerhardt, who had now no friends, except the deaf and bedridden aunt, to whom all things were the same, war or no war, Germans or no Germans, so long as she was fed.