Had she broken into weeping, Mary would have comforted and left her. Tears are their own solace and need no company. But there were no tears here. She sat upon the top rail of the stile, her head high above Mary, her features sharp and almost hard against the sky, her eyes set fast across the rolling fields that dipped and lifted, with elm-treed hollows and uplands all spread gold with corn.
"I have one only," said Mary quietly. "He's in training now."
That made them one, but the calm voice of her who had spoken made the other lean towards that unity for dependence. Impulsively she stretched out her hand and straight and firmly Mary took it.
"I don't know who you are, Ma'am," she said with words her emotion quickened on her lips. "I'm more or less of a stranger to these parts. You may be a grand lady for all I know and judging by your voice, but the way you spoke and all that's happening these days, seems to me we're all just women now."
"All just women," said Mary softly.
She responded eagerly to the gentle encouragement and went swiftly on as though no interruption had been made.
"What I mean," she said, "we've both just parted from what's dearest to us in life--that makes us one. You might be a lord's lady and I just one of common folk--no less, we're one. Something's happened to us that's made us look up like and see each other--it's made you put out your hand to me and what I want to know is what it is that's happened, because with all these talks of England in danger and hatred of those beasts of Germans, there seems something else and I can't get it right. I know, now it's come to it, my son's got to go out and fight. I wouldn't stop him. But I don't think I'd have brought him into the world if I'd known. There are some as like fighting. He doesn't. He cried in my lap last night, but not because he couldn't make up his mind to go. He knew he was going this morning, but he cried in my lap and I heard him say, 'I know I shall fight and hate and go mad with the rest of them when it comes to the time.' I don't rightly know what he meant by that. I hope he does hate but it seemed to me as if it was that he feared most."
"Perhaps he saw himself mad and drunk with blood," said Mary. "Can't you imagine he'd loathe the sight of that? Have you ever seen a woman intoxicated with drink?"
"Once I did--no--twice I did."
"Would you like to think of yourself like that?"