HER BRIDAL NIGHT
"An airy devil hovers in the sky
And pours down mischief."
Shakespeare.
Presently the growling of the guns began to reverberate over London.
First came the far-off rumbling that is felt rather than heard; the hint whereat the mothers of households drop book or work to exclaim, "Hush!... It is!..."
"Don't think so, dear," return the men folk; to retract a couple of minutes later with an "Ah, yes; blast 'em. Here they are. I'll bring the kids down."
Then came the long, nerve-irritating pause.
In Mrs. Cartwright's Westminster flat there were no children to cause those anxieties with which the enemy had made himself more detested than by any legitimate act of war. Her son, as he would have wished you to note, was hardly a kid to be roused from his sleep. As he strolled back from the staircase window, hands in pockets, his manner was nonchalant in the extreme. He was no callow scout, either, to wait in a police-station for that thrilling moment when he should be allowed out to sound the bugle-call.
"Like the gramophone on again?" he suggested (luckily in the more manly of his two voices). "It would drown that boring noise for you."