Tea--with shrimps and watercress--cheered them a little. The
watercress was arranged in a hedge round a fat glass salt-cellar,
a tasteful device they had never seen before. But it was not a
cheerful meal.

After tea Anthea went up to the room that had been Father's, and
when she saw how dreadfully he wasn't there, and remembered how
every minute was taking him further and further from her, and
nearer and nearer to the guns of the Russians, she cried a little
more. Then she thought of Mother, ill and alone, and perhaps at
that very moment wanting a little girl to put eau-de-cologne on
her head, and make her sudden cups of tea, and she cried more
than ever. And then she remembered what Mother had said, the
night before she went away, about Anthea being the eldest girl,
and about trying to make the others happy, and things like that.
So she stopped crying, and thought instead. And when she had
thought as long as she could bear she washed her face and combed
her hair, and went down to the others, trying her best to look as
though crying were an exercise she had never even heard of.

She found the parlour in deepest gloom, hardly relieved at all by
the efforts of Robert, who, to make the time pass, was pulling
Jane's hair--not hard, but just enough to tease.

'Look here,' said Anthea. 'Let's have a palaver.' This word
dated from the awful day when Cyril had carelessly wished that
there were Red Indians in England--and there had been. The word
brought back memories of last summer holidays and everyone
groaned; they thought of the white house with the beautiful