for his typing, he went down to the cottage to repeat these mitigatory considerations to Letty.  He found her much whiter than her sister, and in a state of cold indignation with the War Office.  It was clear she thought that organisation ought to have taken better care of Teddy.  She had a curious effect of feeling that something was being kept back from her.  It was manifest too that she was disposed to regard Mr. Britling as biased in favour of the authorities.

“At any rate,” she said, “they could have answered my telegram promptly.  I sent it at eight.  Two hours of scornful silence.”

This fierce, strained, unjust Letty was a new aspect to Mr. Britling.  Her treatment of his proffered consolations made him feel slightly henpecked.

“And just fancy!” she said.  “They have no means of knowing if he has arrived safely on the German side.  How can they know he is a prisoner without knowing that?”

“But the word is ‘missing.’”

“That means a prisoner,” said Letty uncivilly....

Section 13

Mr. Britling returned to the Dower House perplexed and profoundly disturbed.  He had a distressful sense that things were far more serious with Teddy than he had tried to persuade Letty they were; that “wounded and missing” meant indeed a man abandoned to very sinister probabilities.  He was distressed for Teddy, and still more acutely distressed for Mrs. Teddy, whose every note and gesture betrayed suppositions even more sinister than his own.  And that preposterous sense of liability, because he had helped Teddy to get his commission, was more distressful than it had ever been.  He was surprised that Letty had not assailed him with railing accusations.

And this event had wiped off at one sweep all the protective scab of habituation that had gathered over the wound of Hugh’s departure.  He was back face to face with the one evil chance in five....

In the hall there was lying a letter from Hugh that had come by the second post.  It was a relief even to see it....

Hugh had had his first spell in the trenches.

Before his departure he had promised his half brothers a long and circumstantial account of what the trenches were really like.  Here he redeemed his promise.  He had evidently written with the idea that the letter would be handed over to them.

“Tell the bruddykinses I’m glad they’re going to Brinsmead school.  Later on, I suppose, they will go on to Statesminster.  I suppose that you don’t care to send them so far in these troubled times....