Anna wiped her eyes with her apron. She was now
ashamed of having cried. But it had come over her
"all of a heap," as an English person would have
said.

She had had a sort of vision of that nice young
gentleman, Mr. Jervis Blake, in the thick of battle,
cutting down German men and youths with a sword.
He was so big and strong -- it made her turn sick to
think of it. But her good mistress, Mrs. Otway, had
of course told the truth. The War would be over
long before Mr. Jervis Blake and his kind would be
fit to fight.

Fighting, as old Anna knew well, though most
of the people about her were ignorant of the fact,
requires a certain apprenticeship, an apprenticeship
of which these pleasant-spoken, strong, straight-limbed
young Englishmen knew nothing. The splendidly
trained soldiers of the Fatherland would have
fought and conquered long before peaceful, sleepy
England knew what war really meant. There was
great comfort in that thought.

As that second Saturday of August wore itself
away, it is not too much to say that the most interesting
thing connected with the War which had happened
in Witanbury Close was the fact that Jervis
Blake was now going to be a soldier. When people
met that day, coming and going about their business,
across the lawn-like green, and along the well-kept
road which ran round it, they did not discuss the little
news there was in that morning's papers. Instead they
at once informed one another, and with a most congratulatory
air, "Jervis Blake has heard from the War

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v?