Chapter X

In the early morning sunshine -- for it was only a
quarter-past seven -- Rose Otway stood just within
the wrought-iron gate of the Trellis House.

It was Saturday in the first week of war. She
had got up very early, almost as early as old Anna
herself, for, waking at five, she had found it impossible
to go to sleep again.

For the first time almost in her life, Rose felt
heavy-hearted. The sudden, mysterious departure of
Major Guthrie had brought the War very near; and
so, in quite another way, had done Lord Kitchener's
sudden, trumpet-like call, for a hundred thousand
men. She knew that, in response to that call, Jervis
Blake would certainly enlist, if not with the approval,
at any rate with the reluctant consent, of his father;
and Rose believed that this would mean the passing of
Jervis out of her life.

To Rose Otway's mind there was something slightly
disgraceful in any young man's enlistment in the
British Army. The poorer mothers of Witanbury,
those among whom the girl and her kind mother did
a good deal of visiting and helping during the winter
months, were apt to remain silent concerning the son
who was a soldier. She could not help knowing that
it was too often the bad boy of the family, the
ne'er-do-well, who enlisted. There were, of course, certain
exceptions -- such, for instance, as when a lad came of
a fighting family, with father, uncles, and brothers all

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