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When Kitty opened the door of the upstairs sitting-room she saw her mother sitting, as Mrs Sarah always sat after breakfast, settled well back in an arm-chair between the fireplace and the near window. Her mother had worked hard, and loved her comfort, and being a comfortable woman no one ever grudged it to her. Her daughters would tuck a tuffet under her feet. The Greenwoods’ was not a sentimental household, but when a woman understood her daughters as Mrs Sarah understood them she had a claim to consideration. Youth loves where it likes.

“That you, poppet?—Poor young Ryder’s dead.”

Always before reading the news Mrs Sarah would glance through the casualty lists, not from morbidity of mind, but because she had a motherly eye upon so many of the men out there, and had had them sitting and laughing upon her red cushions. Poor lads! And hardly a day would pass without her having to utter that refrain—“Poor So-and-so’s been killed.” She would give her head a kind of defiant shake, and look just what she was—a bit of old London and old England, a sturdy fighter, no slobbering pacifist. “Damn the Germans! Carry on.”

She was a strong and a solid little woman, with a massive head well set on a fine throat. She had a bosom. Her glossy black hair, without a grey streak in its coiled profusion showed the sheen of a great vitality. Her jocund eyes, and her broad and humorous nose expressed courage. She enjoyed life, and perhaps that was why she understood other lives, and the souls of men who were losing their lives out yonder.

Kitty closed the door.

“Mother, I’m going out to-day.”

Mrs Sarah laid the paper on her knees. She knew that when Kitty made such an announcement there was a very good reason for it. There was nothing flighty or inconsequential about Kitty. Her younger daughter was a determined little person, very much her mother’s daughter, less decorative than Corah with her large, dark, and slightly languid comeliness.

“Quite so, poppet. Anyone downstairs?”

“Yes, a boy.”

“Officer?”

“Going out for the first time, and feeling rather bad about it. And—in a way—so am I.”

“You!”

“Yes,—I am.”

Mrs Sarah said nothing for a moment. Her solid stillness was a counterpoise to the sturdy frankness of her daughter. They understood each other. But this was unexpectedly sudden, especially in Kitty.

“Well,—you know, my dear.”

“I do.”

“That’s right.”

“Can you manage?”

“Corah will be down in ten minutes. I’ll go downstairs.”

“You’ll find him in the divan. His name is St. George. He lives in Cardigan Square. I’ll go and put on my hat.”