Char stopped in his immediate vicinity, and gave a couple of orders in her slow, despotic drawl. She rather wanted Johnnie to see how promptly and unquestioningly they were received.

Johnnie, however, appeared to have his thoughts elsewhere, and Char rather vexedly followed his gaze.

"How I wish my mother wouldn't do this sort of thing!" she said under her breath. "It's most tiring for her, and besides--"

"Besides?" inquired Trevellyan, always courteous, but never of the quickest at catching an inflection.

"I'm afraid I think it _infra dig_. Darting about with all these girls, when she's capable of such very different sort of work--if only she'd do it!"

"My dear Char, what on earth do you want her to do?" demanded Trevellyan, to whom it came as a shock that any one who was privileged to live near Joanna should think her anything but perfect.

"She is an extremely capable woman of business; why shouldn't she take up some big work for the Government? They are crying out for educated women."

"She couldn't possibly leave your father alone at Plessing."

"She could do a certain amount of work at home even without that. The truth is, Johnnie, that neither she nor my father have _realized_ there's a war on at all. They've no sons out there in the trenches, and it hasn't hit them materially; they've not felt it in any single, smallest way. I shouldn't say it to any one but you, but there are times at Plessing when I could go _mad_. To hear my father talk on and on about whether some tree on the estate needs cutting or not, just as though on the other side of a little strip of sea--"

She broke off with a shudder that was not altogether histrionic.

"And mother--she wouldn't even knit socks, because it interfered with his billiards in the evenings! I don't understand her, Johnnie. She must _know_ what it all means, yet it's all shoved away in the background.

Brucey tells me that she's under standing orders not to discuss the news in the papers at breakfast, and mother won't have a single war-book in the house--not even a war-novel, if she can help it. It's as though they were deliberately trying to blind themselves. I _can't_ understand it."

Trevellyan did not feel sure that he understood it, either, but, unlike Char, there was in his mind no shadow of criticism for that which he did not understand. The limitation, Trevellyan always felt, was entirely his.

But he was able to look sympathetically also at Char's vexed bewilderment.

"You're not at Plessing very much, nowadays, yourself."

"No. I don't think I could bear it, Johnnie. Of course they say I'm doing too much, but, after all, I'm of an age to decide that for myself, and to my mind there's simply no choice in the matter. Thank Heaven one _can_ work!"

"Your undertaking is a colossal thing, in its way. It's wonderful of you, Char!"

She looked pleased.

"It's running well at present. Of course, I know what a tiny part of the whole it is really, but--" She broke off quickly as Lady Vivian joined them.

"Who is the little dark-haired girl I've been working with, Char? The one at that table...."

"Oh, a Miss--er--Jones," said Char languidly.

"You never told me you had any one of her sort here. I want to ask her out to Plessing. Couldn't we take her back in the car tonight?"

"My dear mother!" Char opened her eyes in an expression of exaggerated horror. "One of my staff?"

"Well?" queried Lady Vivian coolly, stripping off her borrowed overall.

"Quite out of the question. You don't in the least realize the official footing on which I have to keep those women."

"I should have thought you needn't be any the less official for showing some friendliness to a girl who's come all the way from Wales to help you."

"She's my under-secretary, mother."

"What! sub-scrub to the genteel Miss Delmege? She's got ten times her brains, and is a lady into the bargain."

It infuriated Char that her mother's cool, tacit refusal to acknowledge the infallibility of the Director of the Midland Supply Depot could always make her feel like a little girl again.

She rallied all her most official mannerisms together.

"It's quite impossible for me to differentiate between the various members of the staff, or to make any unofficial advances to any of them."

"Very well, my dear. As, thank Heaven, I'm not a member of your staff, I can remain as unofficial as I please, and have nice little Miss Jones out to see me."

"Mother," said Char in an agony, "it's simply _impossible_. The girl would never know her place in the office again; and think of all the cackling there'd be at the Questerham Hostel about my asking any one out to Plessing. Johnnie, do tell her it's out of the question."

Trevellyan looked at Joanna with a laugh in his blue eyes. He realized, as Char would never realize, that her a.s.sumption of officialdom always provoked her mother to the utterance of ironical threats which she had never the slightest intention of fulfilling.

She shrugged her shoulders slightly at her daughter's vehemence, and crossed over to where Grace Jones was putting on her coat and hat again.

"Good-night. I hope you're not as tired as you look," she said with a sort of abrupt graciousness.

"Oh no, thank you. It's been an extra busy night. It was so kind of you to help."

"I wish I could come again," said Lady Vivian rather wistfully, "but I don't know that I shall be able to."

Lesbia Willoughby, dashing past them at full speed, found time to fling a piercing rebuke over her shoulder.

"There's _always_ a will where there's a way, Joanna. Look at me!"

Neither of them took advantage of the invitation, and Joanna said irrelevantly: "I should like you to come and see me, if you will, but I know you're at work all day. I must try and find you next time I come into Questerham."

"Thank you very much," said Grace in a pleased voice. "I should like that very much indeed. Good-night."

"Good-night," repeated Joanna, and went back to where her daughter, with a rather indignant demeanour, was waiting for her.

"Well?" asked Char, rather sullenly.

Lady Vivian, who almost invariably became flippant when her daughter was most in earnest, said provokingly: "Well, my dear, I've made arrangements for all sorts of unofficial rendezvous. You may see Miss Delmege at Plessing yet."

"Miss Delmege is a very good worker," said Char icily. "She's very much in earnest, always ready to stay overtime and finish up anything important."

"I'm sure Miss Jones is good at her job, too," said Trevellyan, supposing himself to be tactful.

"Fairly good. Not extraordinarily quick-witted, though, and much too sure of herself. I can't help thinking it's rather a pity to distinguish her from the others, mother; she's probably only too ready to take airs as it is, if she's of rather a different cla.s.s."

"Fiddlesticks!" declared Lady Vivian briskly. "Put on your coat, Char, and come along. I can't keep the car waiting any longer. Rather a different cla.s.s indeed! What has that to do with it? The girl's most attractive--an original type, too."

"Of course, if mother has taken one of her sudden violent fancies to this Jones child, I may as well make up my mind to hear nothing else, morning, noon, or night," Char muttered to John Trevellyan, who replied with matter-of-fact common sense that Char wasn't at Plessing for more than an hour or two on any single day, let alone morning, noon, and night.