lant a nation, and the Germans were too proud of
their fleet, to keep their fighting ships in harbour. The
Dean of Witanbury, like the vast majority of his countrymen
and countrywomen, still regarded War as a
great game governed by certain well-known rules which
both sides, as a matter of course, would follow and
abide by.

The famous cathedral city was doing "quite nicely"
in the matter of recruiting. And the largest local employer
of labour, a man who owned a group of ladies'
high-grade boot and shoe factories, generously decided
that he would permit ten per cent. of those of his men
who were of military age to enlist; he actually promised
as well to keep their places open, and to give their
wives, or their mothers, as the case might be, half
wages for the first six months of war.

A good many people felt aggrieved when it became
known that Lady Bethune was not going to give her
usual August garden party. She evidently did not hold
with the excellent suggestion that England should now
take as her motto "Business as Usual." True, a garden-party
is not exactly business -- still, it is one of
those pleasures which the great ladies of a country
neighbourhood find it hard to distinguish from duties.

Yes, life went on quite curiously as usual during the
second week of the Great War, and to many of the
more well-to-do people of Witanbury, only brought in
its wake a series of agreeable "thrills" and mild excitements.

Of course this was not quite the case with the inmates
of the Trellis House. Poor old Anna, for instance,
very much disliked the process of Registration.
Still, it was made as easy and pleasant to her as pos-

[[165]]

p164 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p165w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p166

v?