conversation boring. But it always interested her.
In fact Rose Otway was the one person in Witanbury
who listened with real pleasure to what Jervis
Blake had to say. Oddly enough, his talk almost
always ran on military matters. Most soldiers -- and
Rose knew a good many officers, for Witanbury is a
garrison town -- would discuss, before the Great War,
every kind of topic except those connected with what
they would have described as "shop." But Jervis
Blake, who, owing to his bad luck, seemed fated never
to be a soldier, thought and talked of nothing else.
It was thanks to him that Rose knew so much about
the great Napoleonic campaigns, and was so well
"up" in the Indian Mutiny.

And now, on this 4th of August, 1914, Jervis Blake
sat down by Rose Otway, and began tracing imaginary
patterns on the grass with his stick.

"I'm not going to tell any one else, but there's
something I want to tell you." He spoke in a rather
hard, set voice, and he did not look up, as he spoke,
at the girl by his side.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, Jervis? What is it?"
There was something very kind, truly sympathetic,
in her accents.

"I'm going to enlist."

Rose Otway was startled -- startled and sorry.

"Oh, no, you mustn't do that!"

"I've always thought I should like to do it, if -- if
I failed this last time. But of course I knew it was
out of the question -- because of my father. But
now -- everything's different! Even father will see that
I have no other course open to me."

"I -- I don't understand what you mean," she an-

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