“I think I’ll take everything home myself, to make sure.  You might get me a taxi.”

He crept into his own house furtively with his parcels, like a criminal, though he well knew that the servants would be ready to worship him as a new god.  The children were evidently out.  Lois was not in the drawing-room.  He ran to the bedroom.  She lay on the sofa.

“Here I am!” he announced, posing bravely for her inspection.

She did not move for a few seconds.  Her eyes were hard-set.  Then she gave a tremendous shattering sob, and burst into wild tears.  George stooped to pick up a telegram which was lying on the floor.  It read: 

“You are to report to Adjutant Headquarters Second First West Midland R.F.A.  Wimbledon to-morrow Tuesday before noon.”

The Army had not forgotten him.  Throughout the week his name upon various forms had been under the eye of authority, and at last the order had gone forth.

III

The next morning, after a disturbed night, Lois was taken ill.  George telephoned for the doctor, and as soon as he had seen the patient the doctor telephoned for the nurse, and as soon as the doctor had telephoned for the nurse George telephoned for Laurencine.  What with George’s uniform and approaching departure, and the premature seizure of Lois, the household had, in an exceedingly short time, reached a state of intense excitement and inefficiency.  Nurse was with Lois; the children were with cook in the kitchen; the other two servants were noisily and vaguely active on the stairs and the landings.  The breakfast had been very badly cooked; the newspapers, with a detailed description of the retreat from Mons, were not glanced at.  George was expecting a letter from his mother concerning the arrangements for the visit of Lois and the children to Ladderedge, already decided upon, and no letter had come.

At half-past ten he sent the parlourmaid to get a taxi.  Having inspected his luggage in the hall, he went to the telephone again and ascertained that Laurencine had actually started from home.  Almost at the same moment a taxi stopped in front of the house.  “She’s been jolly quick,” thought George, meaning the parlourmaid; but going to the window he saw that his stepfather and his mother were in the taxi.  He did not rush out to them.  He did not move.  The comfortable sense of the perfect reliability and benevolence of his ‘people’ filled and warmed him.  They had not written again; they had just come themselves.

He affectionately and critically watched them as they got out of the taxi.  Alderman Edwin Clayhanger, undeniably stout, with grey hair and beard, was passing from middle-age into the shadow of the sixties.  He dressed well, but the flat crown of his felt hat, and the artificial, exaggerated squareness of the broad shoulders, gave him a provincial appearance.  His gesture as he paid the driver was absolutely characteristic—­a mixture of the dignified and the boyish, the impressive and the timid.  He had descended from the vehicle with precautions, but Mrs. Clayhanger jumped down lightly, though she was about as old and as grey as her husband.  Her costume was not successful; she did not understand and never had understood how to dress herself.  But she had kept her figure; she was as slim as a girl, and as restless.