sunshine; as this night falls, a benign, placid moon rises 

 over the silent moors into a sky the colour of spun-glass. 

 The breeze choirs softly through the boughs of scented 

 Larch and Birch. All is beauty, harmony while 

 in those fields yonder, south of the sea, the Huns . . . 

 Pray God, by the time the Spring begins to stir shyly 

 once more in our copses ; what time the Crocus pushes 

 forth its little tender Jiame, and the Snowdrop (with us 

 fugitive and reluctant) bends its timorous head under our 

 hill-top winds, we may indeed look back upon these days 

 as upon some dreadful dream ! 



Meanwhile even as the Villino Itself is now to become 

 a home of convalescence for some of our wounded, still 

 unknown, but to be welcomed soon ; even as the Cottage 

 is to be a refuge for women and babes jled from burning 

 Belgian hamlets the following pages, breathing content 

 and all the harmless ways of life, may perchance help 

 to beguile thoughts surfeited with tales and pictures of 

 mortal strife. We hope that, as a sprig of Lavender, 

 or a Cowslip, by his pillow might for a moment 

 relieve the blood-tinted vision of a stricken soldier, so, 

 perhaps, some unquiet heart labouring under the strain 

 of long-drawn suspense, will find a passing relaxation, 

 a forgotten smile, in the company of Loki and his 

 companions. 



Sept. 1914 



