Mrs. Rossiter said to herself in 1915 that she had scarcely known a happy day, or even hour, since the War began.  In the first place Michael had again shown violence of temper with ministers of state over the release from prison of “that” Miss Warren—­“a convict doing a sentence of hard labour.”  And then, when he had got her released, and gone himself with their beautiful new motor—­whatever could the chauffeur have thought?—­to meet her at the prison gates, there he was, afterwards, worrying himself over the War:  not content as she was, as most of her friends were, as the newspapers were, to leave it all to Lord Kitchener and Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and even Mr. Lloyd George—­though the latter had made some rather foolish and exaggerated speeches about Alcohol.  Michael, if he went on like this, would never get his knighthood!

Then when Michael had at last, thanks to General Armstrong, found his right place and was accomplishing marvels—­the papers said—­as a “mender of the maimed”—­here was she left alone in Portland Place with hardly any one to speak to, and all her acquaintances—­she now realized they were scarcely her friends—­too much occupied with war work to spend an afternoon in discussing nothing very important over a sumptuous tea, still served by a butler and footman.

Presently, too, the butler left to join the Professor in France and the footman enlisted, and the tea had to be served by a distraite parlour-maid, with her eye on a munitions factory—­so that she might be “in it”—­and her heart in the keeping of the footman, who, since he had gone into khaki, was irresistible.

Mrs. Rossiter of course said, in 1914, that she would take up war work.  She subscribed most handsomely to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families’ Association, to the Red Cross, to the Prince of Wales’s Fund (one of the unsolved war-time mysteries ... what’s become of it?), to the Cigarette Fund, the 1914 Christmas Plum Pudding Fund, the Blue Cross, the Purple Cross, the Green Cross funds; to the outstandingly good work at St. Dunstan’s and at Petersham—­(I am glad she gave a Hundred pounds each to them); and to the French, Belgian, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Portuguese and Japanese Flag Days and to Our Own Day; besides enriching a number of semi-fraudulent war charities which had alluring titles.

But if, from paying handsomely to all these praise-worthy endeavours to mitigate the horrors of war, she proceeded to render personal service, she became the despair of the paid organizers and business-like workers.  She couldn’t add and she couldn’t subtract or divide with any certainty of a correct result; she couldn’t spell the more difficult words or remember the right letters to put after distinguished persons’ names when she addressed envelopes in her large, childish handwriting; she couldn’t be trusted to make enquiries or to detect fraudulent appeals.  She lost receipts and never grasped the importance of vouchers; she forgot to fill up counterfoils, or if reminded filled them up “from memory” so that they didn’t tally; she signed her name, if there was any choice of blank spaces, in quite the wrong place.