The wave of enthusiasm caused by the War swept even Fanny into its whirlpool of emotion. For several days she haunted the streets, following now this crowd, now that; buying innumerable papers, singing patriotic songs, cheering the soldiers as they passed. She wanted to dash out into the road, to throw her arms round the young soldiers and to kiss them, she was for the time being passionately in love with them. It was her one pathetic and rather mistaken method of expressing the patriotism which surged up in her. She could not have explained this sensation, she only knew that something was so stirred within her that she wanted to give--to give of her very best to these men who symbolized the spirit of the country to her. Poor, hot-hearted little Fanny; she and a great many like her came in for a good deal of blame during the days that followed, yet the instinct which drove them was the same that prompted the boys to enlist. If Fanny had been a man she would have been one of the first at the recruiting station. So submerged was she in her new excitement that Joan and Dick in their trouble slipped entirely out of her mind, only to come back, with the knowledge that she had failed to do anything to help, when, on coming back one afternoon to Montague Square, she saw Mabel standing on the steps of No. 6. To be correct, Mabel had just finished talking to Mrs. Carew and was turning away. Fanny hastened her walk to a run and caught the other up just as she left the step. "You were asking to see Joan, Miss Rutherford," she panted. "Won't you come in and let me tell you about her?" Mabel had hardly recognized her. Fanny, dressed up in her best to meet Joan's possible future relations, and Fanny in her London garments, which consisted of a very tight dress slit up to well within sight of her knee, and a rakish little hat, were two very different people. And whereas the Fanny of Sevenoaks had been a little vulgar but most undeniably pretty, this Fanny was absolutely impossible--the kind of person one hardly liked to be seen talking to. Yet there was something in the girl's face, the frank appeal of her eyes, perhaps, that held Mabel against her will. "The woman tells me that Miss Rutherford has left," she spoke stiffly. "I was really only going to call upon her." "Yes, I know she's gone," Fanny nodded, "back to her people. But there is something between her and your brother that awfully badly wants to be explained. Won't you come in and let me tell you? Oh, do, please do."