horse amidst the badinage of the passersby. And there were
several navigable gas air-ships, not to mention balloons, in the
air. It was all immensely interesting and refreshing after the
dark anxieties of the shop. Edna wore a brown straw hat with
poppies, that suited her admirably, and sat in the trailer like a
queen, and the eight-year-old motor-bicycle ran like a thing
of yesterday.

Little it seemed to matter to Mr. Bert Smallways that a newspaper
placard proclaimed:--

---------------------------------------
GERMANY DENOUNCES THE MONROE
DOCTRINE.

AMBIGUOUS ATTITUTDE OF JAPAN.
WHAT WILL BRITAIN DO? IS IT WAR?
---------------------------------------

This sort of thing was alvays going on, and on holidays one
disregarded it as a matter of course. Week-davs, in the slack
time after the midday meal, then perhaps one might worry about
the Empire and international politics; but not on a sunny Sunday,
with a pretty girl trailing behind one, and envious cyclists
trying to race you. Nor did our young people attach any great
importance to the flitting suggestions of military activity they
glimpsed ever and again. Near Maidstone they came on a string of
eleven motor-guns of peculiar construction halted by the
roadside, with a number of businesslike engineers grouped about
them watching through field-glasses some sort of entrenchment