My friend waved to me from a wicker pony cart as I alighted from the train at her station. She bridged the years which stretched between our last meeting, half a world away, and the present, by the friendliness of her greeting, the sincere warmth of her welcome. “There wasn’t anyone to hold this fractious beast, or I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she apologized as she kissed me. “He looks peaceful enough,” I commented, taking the seat beside my hostess. “_She_ isn’t! Since our horses were commandeered, and we were allowed only eight gallons of petrol a month for the motor, we’ve had to depend on this pony. She’s put on a lot of side since she realized that she was a war-worker,” volunteered my friend as the pony shied heraldically at a baby carriage. “She’s seen that perambulator--or others like it--every day for the last fifteen years, and never noticed until now.” The pony, suddenly bored by her own antics, slowed down to a jog trot; we rounded a grove of trees, and came upon a typical English village dominated by a gray cathedral. “How quaint--how peaceful!” I exclaimed with unfeigned enthusiasm. “Yes, it is a dear old place,” she agreed, and hesitated: “I suppose that, in a way, it’s peaceful, too, if you can overlook the sorrow or suffering in every house. Our older men will have to stay in harness and bear the burdens much longer than heretofore; the middle generation is wiped out. We must wait for the lads who are children now. There isn’t one young man left, in this village, who isn’t lame or blind,” she said, and indicated with her whip a cottage doorway. On the step a blond boy leaned idly against a post. Something in his lack of cognizance of us made me look more closely. “Blind, deaf from ‘shellshock,’ and his right arm gone,” my friend explained. I mentally searched for a pleasanter subject. “You haven’t told me of your family--your husband, Daphne, the boys? I was so excited at seeing you that I waited to ask,” I said. We were passing the green cloister of the cathedral. Above us towered the gray pile with its buttresses, gargoyles and columns; from an unseen belfry a deep-toned bell sounded the hour, a silvery chime supplemented the old canticle: “He ... watching over Israel ... slumbers not ... nor sleeps.” My friend listened intently. “Sometimes, when bad news arrived, or the severely wounded came home, I’ve wondered. I’ve questioned,” she said. I knew that she referred to the message of the bells. “You needn’t question any more. Now, you know!” I comforted. “Yes,” she agreed, “now I know--it had to be. All English mothers are sure of that.” There was in her tone quiet and sincere earnestness that any comment seemed superfluous and impertinent, so in silence we drove on down the long road and passed through a stone gateway and up a curving avenue to the most perfect Georgian house that I have ever seen. She smiled at my enthusiastic admiration.