"At the office there are the telegrams, and the telephone messages, and endless interviews to deal with as well. I don't think I ever get a consecutive hour's time there to deal with the correspondence without interruption. Now, all these letters which you see here could--"

Joanna interrupted the Director of the Midland Supply Depot without ceremony.

"I want you to tell me, Char, why you want that nice little Superintendent of yours to leave the Hostel. The staff there is in despair."

Char suddenly sat upright.

"That is a purely official matter, and it's disgraceful that there should have been gossip about it already."

"But why have you dismissed her?"

"Because she is quite inadequate to fill the post of Hostel Superintendent. I was there myself, and I never was in a worse-managed or more uncomfortable establishment in my life."

"I can quite believe it, my dear, but I'm inclined to think--and Grace, who knows more about it than I do, agrees with me--that she's never had a fair chance of running it properly."

"I don't propose to discuss the matter with my secretary, mother."

"But why not talk it over like ordinary human beings, Char?" said Lady Vivian, reverting to all her old half-impatient, half-humorous outspokenness. "I've no patience with you. What in the name of fortune is the sense of vexing and distressing everybody, when by a little decent management the whole thing could be put on to a proper basis?

Grace, you've lived in that Hostel. If the Superintendent had a freer hand, couldn't it be made more comfortable?"

"Yes, especially with any one as hard-working and anxious to make things nice as Mrs. Bullivant. She may not be a very good manager, but, indeed," said Grace pleadingly, "things have been very much against her.

If she could engage the sort of servants that she needs, and if there were fewer people in the Hostel, so as to give more room, and better arrangements made about the hot water and the food, it could be very nice."

"You are all in that Hostel for the purpose of war-work, Miss Jones, and I should have thought that with that end in view a few minor discomforts could have been overlooked. When one thinks of our men in the trenches--"

"However much you may have thought of them, Char, it didn't prevent your going into rooms before you'd been at the Hostel a fortnight," Joanna interrupted briskly. "Those girls are just as much flesh and blood as you are yourself, whether you own to it or not. But I can tell you one thing, and that is that they're beginning to find it out for themselves."

"To find out what?" said the Director of the Midland Supply Depot, vexed to the extent of for once speaking shortly and in monosyllables.

Joanna shrugged her shoulders, and Grace said emphatically:

"Mrs. Bullivant is very popular, you know, and the staff can't understand her getting such a summary dismissal. After all, it's very serious for her, apart from everything else, because she's got to live."

"To which, I suppose, Char would like to reply, 'Je n'en vois pas la necessite,'" quoted Lady Vivian, with her irrepressible laugh. "But it really won't do, Char. You're dealing with human beings, and you'll have to make up your mind to it."

"I am dealing," said Char magnificently, "with an organization."

"Even so, my dear, it's made up of human beings. But as it's tea-time and I'm extremely hungry," said Lady Vivian, with a side-glance at Miss Bruce, "we'd better postpone discussion until this evening. I don't know whether you feel human enough to leave your papers and eat bread and jam with the rest of us, but I dare say that Grace and Miss Bruce won't give you away to the staff if you do."

The outraged Miss Vivian left the last word to the ribald spirit apparently animating her parent.

XVIII

Captain Trevellyan's Medical Board had pa.s.sed him fit for active service again, and he made matter-of-fact announcement of his approaching return to France in the course of that evening.

"Do you know when, Johnnie?"

"Next draft that goes, I suppose. I rejoin the battalion the day after tomorrow, and it might be any day after that."

Exclamations were left to Miss Bruce. Grace and Joanna received the news almost in silence, and Char remained monosyllabic.

"Will you smoke in the library, John?" said Joanna as she rose from the dining-table. "We'll have coffee there. We can also talk business, Char, if you want to."

"Then, shall I--?" said Miss Bruce, looking at Grace and feeling strongly inclined to say "Shall we--?"

Joanna laid her hand on the little secretary's shoulder. "Of course not, Miss Bruce. You know we count you as one of the family."

In the library a certain tenseness of atmosphere prevailed, until Joanna had finally dismissed the coffee equipage, and leant back in a great leather arm-chair under the lamp.

John, next her, had taken up his favourite position on the hearthrug, and was smoking in meditative silence, his eyes now and then seeking Grace, whose head was bent over a piece of needlework.

Char, presumably from force of habit, had seated herself at the writing-table, and Miss Bruce took a low chair beside her, gazing dumbly from her to Lady Vivian and back again, as though a divided loyalty hara.s.sed her thoughts.

Char broke the silence.

"Mother, you spoke about letting this place this afternoon. Is that what you mean to do?"

"No. I only said that it was in my power to let it, but as a matter of fact, since your Uncle Charles has no wish to make any change until the war is over, he and I have agreed that it had better be made use of. He is quite willing that I should do whatever seems best and most necessary."

Miss Bruce uttered an exclamation.

"Red Cross work, do you mean?"

Char made a movement to check her, as though unwilling to let any display of surprise greet Joanna's announcement.

"Of course," she said slowly, "I could find a hundred uses for a place like Plessing, from turning it into a hospital onwards. The idea had naturally occurred to me before, but as, I must say, mother, you've always discouraged any form of patriotic sacrifice by every means in your power, and done everything possible to ignore the very fact of there being a war, it never struck me that you would consent to such a plan."

John looked up.

"It isn't a question of consent, Char. The scheme is Cousin Joanna's, not any one else's."

"As I am--as I have been placed--in the position of Director of the Midland Supply Depot, John," Char said quietly, "the voluntary organizations here, of whatever kind, come under my jurisdiction, and I must say--"

"Char," interrupted her mother, "you may say anything you please, but you'll never persuade any of us that you and I could work together comfortably, and I haven't any intention of trying the experiment. I shall offer this place as a convalescent home to be attached to the Military Hospital at Staffield. That will put it altogether outside the jurisdiction of your office."

"It's too far from the station."

"Not with a couple of cars and Government petrol," said John.

"The doctors here are overworked as it is."

"A convalescent home does not need the same amount of medical attendance as a hospital, and Dr. Prince is perfectly willing to undertake whatever is necessary."

"But you'll want a staff, and at least two trained nurses in the house."