"I can't eat."
"You must. Bear yourself as an Englishwoman should, Brenda. Think how many women there are at this moment mourning over the death of their dearest. You, at least, have hope--it might have been far worse."
Brenda, agitated as she was, could not but admit the truth of this, and she forced herself to eat. She would need all her strength to bear up against this cruel blow. After all, as her father had very rightly said, things were far from being as bad as they might have been. Her husband's name might have been on the list of those killed or dangerously wounded. As it was he was only missing. News of him might come at any time. She reproached herself with ingratitude toward a kind Providence. In a more cheerful frame of mind she finished her breakfast and got ready to go down to the War Office with her father. There she had an object-lesson in seeing the endurance of women whose news was as bad as it could be. If her own trouble was hard to bear, how infinitely harder was the lot of those whose dead lay on the stricken field.
"Father! father!" she whispered, "I should not repine. I am so much better off than these poor things!"
The news of the Tugela disaster had brought a large crowd to the War Office, and a vast number of people had collected in the street. Men and women were scanning the fatal lists, and many a heartrending sight did the girl see as she stood there waiting for her father, who had gone into the office to see if he could gain any definite news about his son-in-law. Outside, a proud old lady sat waiting in her carriage. She bore herself with dignity, but her face was ashen white. And as Brenda stood there, she saw a girl come out and stagger into the carriage. No word was spoken, but in a storm of weeping she threw herself on the old lady's breast. And the older woman neither wept nor cried out, but drove silently away with the distracted girl beside her, and she was a woman who had given her country of the best she had to offer--the life of her son.
"Oh, poor woman! poor woman!" wept Brenda.
There was a silence as of death in that crowded office, save for now and again a low whisper or a stifled sob. And still the people came and went and came again. Brenda waited with sinking heart. When would her father come? Would he bring good news or bad? She braced herself up to bear the worst.
"It is all right, Brenda," she heard him say at last--he had come up behind her as she stood watching the crowd outside. "Harold is safe!"
"Oh, thank God for that!" she gasped, clinging to his arm. "He is not wounded, is he?"
"No! He is a prisoner. He was out with a detachment of his men on patrol duty, and the Boers captured the whole lot. I expect he will be sent to Pretoria, so you need not be anxious now, my dear."