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"I suppose I am silly," said Mrs. Morland laughing herself. "But Robin, and Anne, I want to have a conspiracy with you," she added, leading her young friends out on to the stone path above which the highest tendrils of the vine caught the sun's dying glow. "Jane seems very unhappy because she can't worry about her husband as much as she ought to. What can be done?"

"It's a rotten position," said Robin. "She might hear he was dead, or he might walk in to-morrow. No, that's a bit too dramatic for this regimented war. But she might hear he was in a Swedish ship being repatriated and that he would be at a delousing camp in Stornaway till further notice and no questions to be asked. I beg your pardon, Miss Bunting," he added as that lady stepped out of the french window.

"If you mean for the use of the word delousing, I was familiar with it in the last war," said Miss Bunting.

She did not add "before you were born," but the effect was equally crushing.

"We were talking about Jane Gresham, Miss Bunting," said Mrs. Morland, feeling that in this elderly spinster with the little black velvet bow at her neck lay a far better and wiser knowledge of the world than she would ever have. "It seems so dreadfully unhappy to have this long uncertainty."