feet, an abnormal talent for running away. From morning until night I am busy with a thousand and one things, commonplace things mostly, in the house, or the village, or beyond. And wherever I go, you seem near, with your long, thin stride, and your preoccupied face, as if your feet had a bit of difficulty in keeping up with your mind. There is a strange sense always, when I walk in the forest, or along the highway, even when I go to Farmer Wilde's to see about butter and vegetables, that you are walking by my side. Peter is very solicitous about the welfare of my guest, and I have seen him looking at her with vast pity in his eyes. "Peter," I reminded him, "you can no longer say that you have not seen a Belgian refugee." "No, Miss," was his only answer. He digs and prunes, still arguing his country's lack of need of him in this pretence of war. "There's the British fleet, 'm," he observed, with fine scorn. "It was hordered out at the beginning of this so-called war, and told to sink the henemy's fleet. Wot 'ave we 'eard of it since, 'm? Nothing, nothing at all. It's just bluff, 'm; the fleet is out on the 'igh seas for pleasure, junketing at our expense. Doubtless all the gentlemen enjoy a cruise." "Peter," I say solemnly, "don't you really know that a German submarine sank three British cruisers on the twenty-second of September, the _Hague_, the _Cressy_, and the _Aboukir_? Do you think that the gallant men upon them went to the bottom for pleasure?" Peter turned a trifle pale under the red of his forehead and cheeks. "I heard that rumour," he remarked, with an attempt at airy skepticism, "and I dessay you believe it. I dessay you think it actually happened. But I refuse to believe it; when was the British fleet ever defeated?" There was a tentative something, a touch of question, in the bravado of his denial. "Peter," I suggest, "our fall gardening is not a national necessity; there is greater need of you elsewhere. Why not be a bomb-sweeper; you like the sea, I believe?" Madge listens, her broom suspended in mid-air, as if it were listening too. A look of embarrassment crosses Peter's face, as he rubs his cheek. "The bombs are very explosive, I've 'eard, 'm." "Peter," I say, "if this is an imaginary war, those are imaginary bombs and do not explode." "I'm not so sure of that, Miss," says Peter shrewdly.