"Berlin this journey. Hand me them socks!"
Her eyes leapt. "Is it war?"
"That's it."
She sat down ghastly, wrapping her hands in her apron as if they had been mutilated and she wished to hide the stumps.
Men abuse the Army when they are in it and take their discharge at the earliest possible moment; but when the call comes they down tools with avidity, and leaving the mill, the mine, the shunting yard, and the shop, they troop back to the colours with the lyrical enthusiasm of those who have re-discovered youth on the threshhold of middle-age.
Ern, you may be sure, was no exception to the rule.
Packing and unpacking his bundle on his knees, he was busy, happy, important. But there was no such desperate hurry after all: for he did not join the crowds which thronged the recruiting stations in those first days: he waited for the Colonel to arrange matters so that he could join his old battalion at Aldershot direct.
Ruth watched him with deep and jealously guarded eyes in which wistfulness and other disturbing emotions met and mingled.
Once only she put to him the master question.
"What about us, Ern?"