Nancy first and last

by Amy Ella Blanchard

"He and Lillian are coming," Anita assured her. "They are just putting Tommy through his last stunt. Did you walk over, Eleanor?"

"No, Alicia drove us over in the car. She declares that she wants to get all the practice she can, for if there is war she means to offer her services to run a car."

"Alicia does? I can scarce believe it of her."

"She is a quiet body, but when it comes to things like that you've no idea of how daring she is."

Here Lillian and Bertie came in, and the matter of the garden party was again discussed; then the visitors declared they had come over merely for a moment's call and must be getting back. They offered to take Bertie and Harry in with them so far as they should be going and were off with Alicia at the wheel.

The garden party took place as planned, but it was the last affair of the kind for many a day to come, for louder and louder grew the mutterings of war, and finally it was upon them. Even when it was an actual fact, Mrs. Manning refused to believe that it could be really serious, that it would last. She was rather sarcastic when Lillian, white and shaken, announced that Bertie was leaving to go into training; that he and Harry were going in together, and she wondered if they would be called to the front very soon.

"Probably never," responded her grandmother. "This isn't going to last. Don't get into heroics, Lillian. Of course Bertie is like all young men, likes to parade around and be somebody, likes to talk big, as all boys do. Don't you worry about those boys; probably they will never get so much as a smell of gunpowder."

But as time went on she said less and less about this going to the front, was very tender with Lillian, very vehement in her vituperations against the Germans, and finally swung over altogether; was for turning the cottage into a hospital and spent all her time in knitting for the soldiers. News from the front was paramount to any other, and the search for Pepé, important as it still was to his mother and sister, sank into a matter of insignificance compared to this other great issue.

Across Anita's mind flitted once in a while the remembrance of her aforetime lover. Had he returned to America? What was he doing? The chance of a meeting appeared further off than ever, and she thought oftener of Bertie and Harry, for whom they were all preparing kits, than of Terrence Wirt. Her mother was casting about in her mind to discover the best use she could make of her own knowledge of nursing. She and Anita went up to London with Mr. Kirkby to inquire into matters there. It was a curious experience for the girl and one she was not likely to forget. The darkened city gave her the impression of something mediæval, something she had read about, yet there was still much to see, much to learn.

One day when she was getting into a 'bus with Mr. Kirkby she caught sight of two men getting into another 'bus. "Oh," she exclaimed, looking back, "I do believe that is Donald Abercrombie and his uncle. I felt sure we should come across them again some day. Dear me, but that does take me back to those days in Spain."