It was made, for all the world, like any Pole's or Serbian's or Belgian's; material valuables she let pass with glorious carelessness, as they left the silver spoons in order to salvage some sentimental trifle like a baby-shoe or old love-letters. Elliott took the closing of her home as she had taken the disposal of the big car, cheerfully enough, but she could not leave behind some absurd little tricks of thought that she had always indulged in. She was as strange to the road as any Picardy peasant and as bewildered, with--shall I say it?--considerably less pluck and spirit than some of them, when the landmarks she had lived by were swept away. But they, you see, had a dim notion of what was happening to them. Elliott had none. She didn't even know that she was being evacuated. She knew only that ways which had always worked before had mysteriously ceased working, that prejudices and preoccupations and habits of mind and action, which she had spent her life in accumulating, she must now say good-by to, and that the war, instead of being across the sea, a thing one's friends and cousins sailed away to, had unaccountably got right into America itself and was interfering to an unreasonable extent in affairs that were none of its business. Father came home one night from a week's absence and said, as he unfolded his napkin, "Well, chicken, I'm going to France." They were alone at dinner. Miss Reynolds, the housekeeper, was dining out with friends, as she sometimes did; nights that, though they both liked Miss Reynolds, father and daughter checked with a red mark. "To France?" A little thrill pricked the girl's spine as she questioned. "Is it Red Cross?" "Not this time. An investigation for the government. It may, probably will, take months. The government wants a thorough job done. Uncle Samuel thinks your ancient parent competent to hold up one end of the thing." "Stop!" Elliott's soft order commandeered all her dimples. "I won't have you maligning my father, you naughty man! Ancient parent, indeed! That's splendid, isn't it?" "I rather like it. I was hoping it would strike you the same way." "When do you go?" "As soon as I can get my affairs in shape--I could leave to-morrow, if I had to. Probably I shall be off in a week or ten days." "I suppose the government didn't say anything about my investigating something, too?" "Now you mention it, I do not recollect that the subject came up." She shook her head reprovingly, "That _was_ an omission! However, I think I'll go as your secretary." Mr. Cameron smiled across the table. How pretty she was, how daintily arch in her sweetness! "That arrangement would be entirely satisfactory to me, my dear, but I am not taking a secretary. I shall get one over there, when I need one." "But what can I go as?" pursued the girl. "I'd like to go as something." Heavens! she looked as though she meant it! "I'm afraid you can't go, Lot, this time."