The kitchen door opened softly, very softly; we stood breathless in the corner. If it were a burglar, we were ready; were not all the massive British kitchen utensils near? The lamplight fell full upon the face and form of a strange man, a very strange man, the strangest I ever saw, plump, round of face, with straggling, irregular locks of hair that had been newly shorn,--a decidedly strange man, in Peter's clothes. "You--you hussy!" said Peter, but the sorry epithet expressed a world of relief, even, I thought, of endearment. One would have supposed that Madge could not grow redder; yet her face became even more a flame. "You, a respectable British female," said Peter, advancing with slow heaviness of tread, as if Madge's end would really come when he reached her and the Sunday clothes; "You, a British female, and the wife of an honest man, out on the highway in a man's clothes, _my_ clothes." He took hold of her arm, but gently; he would not have dared do otherwise. His wife looked at him steadily; he could not meet her glance, and his eyes fell. "You're little better than a suffragette," he said weakly. "That may be," said Madge, not without a certain loftiness, touching her hair with a novel feminine gesture, "that may be; but I _am_ better than an able-bodied man that doesn't hoffer himself to his country. The suffragettes are fighting for theirs." Peter was stricken; he had nothing to say. Don, arriving and unable to understand, barked wildly at Madge, and she seemed to mind his remarks much more than she had Peter's. I could help it no longer, and I burst out laughing. "Madge," I asked, "where have you been?" "I've been to the recruiting station at Shepperton, 'm," said Madge, with one look at Peter. "I could bear it no longer; not a finger raised for King or Country." Peter hung his head. "Or the 'Ouse of Lords," Madge added witheringly. "I've been a-reading and a-reading, 'm, in those papers of yours about the French women that they find, fighting side by side with the men, for their country, and about the Russian women fighting too; but when I saw yesterday that German women had been found fighting, something gave way in my 'ead. I think you call it brain-storm in America, 'm. Those barbarian women, from God knows where, fighting for King and Country and their 'Ouse of Lords! I said to myself that the Snell family should send one man to the seat of war." "I've been a-considering," said Peter. "I've been a-thinking it out." "The present h'our," glared Madge, "is no time to _think_!" "That was evidently the exact view of the European statesmen in August," I ventured, but Madge and Peter were too intent to catch my unkind whisper. "So I put on Peter's clothes," said Madge, "and I went and walked to Shepperton and offered myself. Your Queen Elizabeth would have done as much." _My_ Queen Elizabeth, indeed! "What did they say to you?" demanded Peter. "I shan't tell you," said Madge. And she never did.