"Why didn't you tell me, dear?" asked Miss Henderson. "I didn't even know you had a boy out there." "Oh, not a _feawncy_--only a chum," said Miss Marsh, still sniffing. "Is he bad, dear?" "A flesh-wound in the arm, and something about trench feet." "That's a nice slow thing, and they'll send him to England to get well," prophesied Grace. Miss Delmege rose from her seat. "I'm sorry you've been feeling upset," she said to Miss Marsh. "It seems rather strange you didn't say anything sooner, but I'm sorry about it." "Thank you," Miss Marsh replied with a gulp. "If I've been rather sharp in my manner today, I hope you won't think I meant anything. This has rather upset me." Miss Delmege bowed slightly, and Grace, fearing an anticlimax, begged Miss Marsh to come up to bed. The final amende was made next morning, when Miss Delmege, in a buff-coloured drapery known as "my fawn _peignwaw_," came to the door and asked for admittance. Grace opened the door, and Miss Delmege said, in a voice even more distinct than usual: "I know Miss Marsh was tired last night, dear, so I've brought her a cup of our early tea." VII "Mother, are you coming to the Canteen again tomorrow? You remember what a rush it was last Monday, and it'll be just as bad again." "No, Char, I am _not_," was the unvarnished reply of Lady Vivian. Char compressed her lips and sighed. She would have been almost as much disappointed as surprised if her mother had suddenly expressed an intention of appearing regularly at the Canteen, but she knew that Miss Bruce was looking at her with an admiring and compassionate gaze. Sir Piers, who substituted chess for billiards on Sunday evenings because he thought it due to the servants to show that the Lord's Day was respected at Plessing, looked up uneasily. "You're not going out again tomorrow, eh, my dear? I missed our game sadly the other night." "No, it's all right; I'm not going again." Joanna never raised her voice very much, but Sir Piers always heard what she said. It made Char wonder sometimes, half irritably and half ashamedly, whether he could not have heard other people, had he wanted to. The overstrain from which she herself was quite unconsciously suffering made her nervously impatient of the old man's increasing slowness of perception. "And where has Char been all this afternoon? I never see you about the house now," Sir Piers said, half maunderingly, half with a sort of bewilderment that was daily increasing in his view of small outward events. "I've been at my work," said Char, raising her voice, partly as a vent to her own feelings. "I go into the office on Sunday afternoons always, and a very good thing I do, too. They were making a fearful muddle of some telegrams yesterday." "Telegrams? You can't send telegrams on a Sunday, child; they aren't delivered. I don't like you to go to this place on Sundays, either. Joanna, my dear, we mustn't allow her to do that."