"Dear me! What and when was that?" pondered the Professor. "Ah, yes. I have it. Some lunatic that wrote to me in France. Something about '_half the trouble in the world arising from people falling in Love--with the wrong people_.' Yes, yes. And what was this 'Charm' supposed to do?... Ah, it says now that the Charm was spoof...." He went on reading the letter; the belated apology of some pupil at some University where he had once lectured.... He took it in, half thinking of the next letter as he read.... Fern seed, it appeared, was all that the "magic" packet had contained.... The Professor scarcely remembered that there had been a packet! What had he done with it now, and with the letter? Burnt them, he thought, before that little Olwen got hold of that nonsense.... It would have been just like a very young, imaginative girl like that to have believed in it! Well, this last letter would have to shatter that belief! thought her Uncle, as he crumpled the practical joker's apology into a ball and tossed it on to the fire. At the moment when her Uncle's thoughts were turning to her, his niece, young Mrs. Ross, was watching rather a pretty scene. She stood at the window of her husband's rooms in Victoria Street, his old bachelor rooms into which she had brought the new element of her girlish belongings, her love, herself.... Behind her on the table, above a pile of his books on "Reconstruction," there trailed a dainty litter of her sewing: the lacy whiteness of a garment that was being reconstructed, feminine-fashion, into some other garment. Beside her stood another war-bride of but a few more weeks' standing, young Mrs. Awdas. Both of them were looking down into the street, where a crowd lined the pavement to right and left, waiting, watching to see a company of American soldiers march past on their way to Victoria Station. Ah! Here it was, the stream of clean khaki cleaving the motley of the crowd. Here they came, the boys, tall, fit, and splendid, drilled to the minute; the pick and cream of the new belligerent country.... Here they came, spare and useful looking and ah, how faultless in kit and accoutrements, from straight-brimmed hats to spotlessly-polished boots. And as they swung past with the unison of a machine in which every part is perfect, there hove into sight, straggling, slouching towards them out of the station, a knot of British just back from the firing line. An officer walked along beside the men.