"I think," he announced, "you are balmy on the crumpet, both of you. Balmy," he repeated, staring from one to the other and apparently sobered by the shock of his own astonishment. Suddenly a gleam of intelligence lit up his little pig's-eyes—he leaned yet further over the gate, pointed a finger and queried—
"You do not read the newspapers?"
"As a rule I do," William informed him, "but we have not seen any lately—not since we left England."
"And how long is it since you left England?"
William told him it was over three weeks.
"Three weeks," the other repeated, "three weeks without newspapers ... and I think you do not speak French, eh?"
"My wife," William answered, "understands it—a little. But we neither of us speak it." His manner was pardonably irritated, and if he had not judged it imprudent he would have refused point-blank to answer this purposeless catechism. Nor was his pardonable irritation lessened when amusement once more gained the upper hand in Heinz. Suddenly and unaccountably he burst into hearty laughter—rocked and trembled with it, holding to the gate and wiping the tears from his cheeks. Whatever the joke it appealed also to his comrades, who, once it was imparted between Heinz's paroxysms, joined their exquisite mirth to his own. The three stood swaying in noisy merriment, while Griselda, whitefaced and tight-lipped, and William with a fast disappearing left eye awaited in acute and indignant discomfort some explanation of a jest that struck them as untimely. It came only when Heinz had laughed himself out. Wiping the tears once more from his eyes, and with a voice still weakened by pleasurable emotion, he gave them in simple and unpolished language the news of the European cataclysm.
"I tell you something, you damn little ignorant silly fools. There is a war since you came to Belgium."
Probably they thought it was a drunken jest, for they made no answer beyond a stare, and Heinz proceeded with enjoyment.
"A War. The Greatest that ever was. Germany and Austria—and Russia and France and Belgium and England and Servia."