“Me, too,” cried Bertie.
“Me, too,” cried Jackie.
She bent down and smothered herself in the midst of those soft, warm faces.
“Darlings, Mummie’s own darlings,” she said. “You are a million times better than Daddy’s pounds which he is going to bring home. Look, what is that under the trees there? Why, it’s a pig! It must have got out of its pig-house. Run across to the farm and tell Whalley that there is a pig got loose.”
“But it won’t bite us?” asked Bertie.
“Not if you salute it. Call out, ‘Guten Tag: Morgen ist Mittwoch.’”
“But it’s only Sunday,” said Freddy.
“Never mind. That’s what you must always say to a pig when you meet it, and then it will be pleased.... Now, run along, and then we’ll all go home, and you shall have your supper, and when you’re in bed Mummie will come to see you, and wish you good-night.”
The children ran gaily off across the grass, shouting out their salutations to the pig, delicious little figures, two in their Sunday sailor suits, the third barelegged to above the knee, and soon they were half swallowed up in a tall belt of bracken. Aline’s eyes followed them till they disappeared, her whole face tender and shining with mother-love, and then she turned to Hermann again. The light died from her eyes: they became hard and unhappy again.
“Hermann, what is to happen to us all?” she said. “Already, even before we are at war, the war has begun in me. You told me I should have to decide where my sympathies lay, and I have decided. At least, there was no decision about it. I only knew that I knew.”