Her husband was quartered there at the same time as Godfrey." She paused uncomfortably--somehow she found it very difficult to go on and say what, after all, she had come here to say this morning.
"I suppose," said Miss Pendarth at last, "that Godfrey Radmore is back in Brisbane by now.

One of the strange things about this war has been the way in which those who could have been best spared, escaped." In spite of herself, Betty smiled again.

"Godfrey has come back to England for good," she said quietly, "he's coming to-day for a long week-end." "D'you mean," asked Miss Pendarth, "that he's coming to stay with this Mrs.Crofton at The Trellis House ?" "Oh, no!" exclaimed Betty.

(What odd ideas Miss Pendarth sometimes had.) "He's coming to Old Place of course: he telephoned to Janet from London, and proposed himself." "I think it's very good of you all to put up with him," said Miss Pendarth drily, "I've never said so before, my dear, but I thought it exceedingly ungrateful of him not to have come down here when he was in England a year ago, I mean when he sent that puppy to your brother Timmy." Betty remained silent, and for once her old friend felt--what she too seldom did feel--that she might just as well have kept her thoughts to herself.
Miss Pendarth was really attached to Betty Tosswill, but she was one of those people--there are many such--who find it all too easy to hurt those they love.
They both got up.
"I'm afraid you think me very uncharitable," said the older woman suddenly.
Betty looked at her rather straight.

"I sometimes think it strange," she said slowly, "that anyone as kind and clever as I know you are, does not make more allowances for people.