"Maybe 'twas after kissin' his wife good-bye," Miss Oliver suggested. "I should!"
"There's no accounting for tastes, as you say. . . . But I've had good reason to know for some time that they order a supply into the house and drink when nobody is looking. I've seen the boy from the Pilchards deliver a bottle there almost every Saturday. . . . So, the publics being closed this morning, he can't help himself but go off with (I dare say) a noggin of Plymouth gin for a stiffener; and might, for all we know, be called to the presence of his Maker with it still inside him."
"What hurries me," confessed Miss Oliver, "is the Government's being so inconsistent. It closes the public-houses on a six-days' licence and then goes and declares War on the very day the magistrates have taken the trouble to hallow." She shook her head. "I may be mistaken—Heaven send that I am!—but I can't see on any Christian principles how a nation can look to prosper that declares war on a Sabbath. If it's been coming this long while; as everybody seems to say now; why couldn't we have waited until the clocks had finished striking twelve to-night—or else done it yesterday, if there was all that hurry?"
"The Battle of Waterloo was fought on a Sunday," Mrs Polsue put in. "I've often heard my great uncle Robert mention it as a remarkable fact."
"Then you may be sure the French began it, with their Continental ideas of Sunday observance. I suppose we mustn't speak ill of the French, now that we're allies with them. But I couldn't, when I heard the news, help fearing that our King and his Cabinet had been led away by them in this matter: and once you begin tampering with the Lord's Day—" Miss Oliver shivered. "We shall have the shops open next, I shouldn't wonder."
"You are right about the Battle of Waterloo," said Mrs Polsue. "My great-uncle Robert was always positive that the French began it. He had that on the best authority. The Duke of Wellington, he said, had no choice but to resist: and it must have gone all the more against the grain because he was distantly connected with John Wesley, only for some reason or another they spelt their names differently. My great-uncle, in the room that he called his study, had two engravings, one on each side of the chimney-piece. One was John Wesley, when quite a child, being rescued from a burning house, with his father right in the foreground giving thanks to God in the old-fashioned knee-breeches that were then worn. The other represented the Duke of Wellington in a similar frame on his famous charger Copenhagen and in the act of saying in his racy way, 'Up, Guards, and at 'em!' My great-uncle would often point to these two pictures and spell out the names for us as children, 'W-e-s-l-e-y' and 'W-e-l-l-e-s-l-e-y,' he would say. 'What different destinies the Almighty can spell into the same word by sticking a few letters in the middle!'"
"It's to be wished we had more men of that stamp in these days," sighed Miss Oliver. "I should feel safer."
"I hear Lord Kitchener well spoken of," said her friend guardedly. "But I think we go too fast, my dear. It does not follow, because the Reserves are called up, that War is actually declared. It is sometimes done by way of precaution—though God forbid I should say a word in defence of a Government which taxes us for being patriotic enough to keep domestic servants. That doesn't, of course, apply to you, my dear; still—"
"It only makes matters worse," Miss Oliver declared hastily. "If they haven't declared War yet, there's the less hurry to gallivant these Reservists about in brakes when to-morrow's a Bank Holiday. And, as for patriotism, if I choose to fall downstairs taking up my own coals, surely I'm as patriotic as if I employed another person to do it: though for some reason best known to itself the Law doesn't compensate me."
"There's something in what you say," agreed Mrs Polsue, a little mollified, having caused her friend to rankle. "And the Law—or the Government, or whatever you choose to call it—could afford the money, too, if 'twould look sharper after compensating itself. . . . A perfectly scandalous sight I witnessed just now, by the bridge. There was that Nicholas Nanjivell called up to take his marching-orders, and—well, you know how the man has been limping these months past. The thing was so ridic'lous, the other men shouted with laughter; and prettily annoyed the Customs Officer, for he went the colour of a turkey-cock. ''Tis your own fault,' I had a mind to tell him, 'for not having looked after your business.' Pounds and pounds of public money that Nanjivell must have drawn first and last for Reservist's pay, and nobody takin' the trouble to report on him."