'"Wellington's nose were badly done in and he looks awful bad but the rector's boy"'——
'Wot does she say about him?' asked Mathews, staring into space.
'"The rector's boy could not see out of neither eye for 3 days."'
Repressing a chuckle by a great effort, Mathews hastily fumbled for his corncob pipe, and placing it unlit in his mouth, continued to look into space with a face that was almost purple from smothered exuberance.
'"Milord and Lady,"' resumed Dick, '"is just the same and Milord always asks how you was and will I remember him to you."'
'A thoroughbred—that's wot he is,' said Mathews, apparently addressing the distant refugees.
'"Miss Elise was heer last week and is that sweet grown that all the woonded tommies fit with pillos to see who wud propos to her. There ain't no news. Bertha the skullery maid marrid a hyland soldier and they are going for to keep a sweet-shop after the war. Wellington sprayned his ankil yesterday by clyming out of the windo where I had locked him in as he has the mumps."'
'Wot a infant!' commented Mathews admiringly.
'"I am sending you a parsil and a picter of me and Wellington. We are very lonesum, daddy, and I'll be reel glad when the war is over and you come back. It is awful lonesum and Wellington is to. This morning he cut his hand trying to carv our best chair into the shape of a horse. I am feeling fine and hope the reumatiz don't worry you no more. With heeps of love from me and Wellington, your wife, Maggie."'
It was a strange contrast in faces as the young man folded the letter and handed it back. In the countenance of the groom there was a sturdy pride in the epistolary achievement of his wife—a pride which he made a violent but unsuccessful effort to conceal. In the pale, handsome face of the young aristocrat there was a whimsical pathos. By the picture conjured up in the crudely written letter he had seen his parents, his sister, the humble cottage of the groom, and the wife's faithfulness and cheeriness. He had seen them, not as separate things, but hallowed and unified by a common sacrifice for England.