still some of them were very circumstantial and, in
fact, obviously true.

Languidly, for there never seemed any real news
nowadays, she opened wide her newspaper. And then
her heart gave a leap! Printed right across the page,
in huge black letters, ran the words:

@@@@"BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN FRANCE."

And underneath, in smaller type:

@@@@"LANDED AT BOULOGNE WITHOUT A SINGLE CASUALTY."

Then Major Guthrie had been right and the Dean
wrong? And this was why Anna had spoken as she
had done just now, in that rather rude and injured
tone?

Later in the morning, when she met the Dean, he
showed himself, as might have been expected, very
frank and genial about the matter.

"I have to admit that I was wrong," he observed;
"quite wrong. I certainly thought it impossible that
any British troops could cross the Channel till a decisive
fleet action had been fought. And, well -- I don't
mind saying to _you,_ Mrs. Otway, I still think it a pity
that we have sent our Army abroad."

Three days later Rose and her mother each received
a quaint-looking postcard from "Somewhere in
France." There was neither postmark nor date. The
first four words were printed, but what was really _very_
strange was the fact that the sentences written in were
almost similar in each case. But whereas Jervis Blake

[[169]]

p168 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p169w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p170

v?