David entered making an awful noise on a drum.
"Shut up, David," said his mother, "and tell Edith what you are going to do when you're eighteen."
"Kill the Huns," chanted David. "Mayn't I play my drum any more, mummy?"
"Yes, go and play it all over the house. And sing Tipperary all the time."
David made a shrill departure.
"Of course you can teach any child that!" said Edith.
"I know. That's so lovely. If I had fifty children I should teach it to them all. I wish I had. I should love seeing them all go out to France, and I should squirm as each of them went. I should like to dig up the graves of Bach and Brahms and Beethoven and Wagner and Goethe, and stamp on their remains. They have nothing to do with it all but they're Huns. I don't care whether it is logical or Christian or anything else, but that's the way to win the war. And you're largely responsible for that; I never saw red before you talked such nonsense about the war being over. If we haven't got an army we're going to have one, and I shall learn to drive a motor. If I could go to that window and be shot, provided one of those beastly Huns was shot too, I should give you one kiss, darling, to shew I forgave you, and go to the window dancing! I quite allow that if everybody was like you we should lose, but thank God we're not."
Dodo's face was crimson with pure patriotism.
"I'm not angry with you," she said, "I'm only telling you what you don't know, and what I do know, so don't resent it, because I haven't the slightest intention of quarrelling with you, and it takes two to make a quarrel. You know about trombones and C flat, and if you told me about C flat——"
Edith suddenly burst into a howl of laughter.