That important person, Miss Flossie Wardlaw, was extremely angry! Events were interfering with her plan of life, and upsetting all her theories of fitness. The preoccupation, the infatuation, shown by the only other member of her family for something outside domestic life was too exasperating. That tiresome fort at Dover was absorbing all her father's thoughts. He grew paler and more haggard day by day, bestowing less and less attention on the far more important interests that concerned his little daughter and the familiar programme of her daily life. Flossie told herself that she was not unreasonable. She had been quite ready to make allowances. Alarming things, she knew, had happened close at hand. Impudent foreigners had seized Fort Warden by stealth. The ceaseless boom of the big guns disturbed the current of existence in the bungalow. Things were tiresome; indeed, quite worrying when they kept on like that! It was dreadful, that Englishmen, her father's soldier-friends, should be killed by foreigners--killed in England too, only ten miles away; usually they were only killed a long way off, and that seemed different. But, of course, it could only end in one way; the offenders would be turned out and most severely punished. Meanwhile, the repeated and prolonged absence of her father at Dover, and his preoccupied behaviour when he was at home, filled Flossie with mixed feelings of annoyance and sympathy, in which the former ingredient became more and more predominant. Her queenly power seemed to be undermined. Her faithful subject had deserted her. Oh! that horrid Fort! Miss Flossie nursed the personal sense of injury, and husbanded her growing grievance, to the exclusion of thoughts concerning the national questions that arose. So much depends upon the point of view; and that, in turn, so much depends upon one's age. Nevertheless, the issues of the struggle at Fort Warden were vitally important. They riveted the attention of many millions of the population of the world. Here in England itself the seizure of the fort had assumed a colossal significance, shaking the nation out of the ever-narrowing grooves of Parliamentary and municipal party conflict, compelling men to look back to a great history and forward to an era of littleness that gave pause even to the most selfish and complacent. Cost what it might, the enemy must be driven out. Our Flag must wave above that fort again. A spreading feeling of fury and resentment arose against the Government. To this complexion had we come! Pushing politicians, self-seeking wire-pullers of both sexes, had dragged England in the dust. So much for Petticoat Government! So much for the Amazonian craze, this make-believe of women-soldiers and girl-gunners. Woman had largely ousted man from place and power, and this was the result! A handful of foreigners had been emboldened to assail us on our own sacred soil. Popular anger expressed itself afresh by breaking out viciously into the old doggerel:--