The little woman’s face flushed and her eyes snapped. “Mr. Jones,� she said, “them victuals would choke me.�
“Wh-what?� He gazed at her with blank astonishment.
“I can’t set down to a gorge like that,� she said. “I’d be thinking ’bout them hungry mouths over there.�
“Starving Belgians and French,� interjected Sweet William.
Mrs. Mallett hurried on: “Yes, them and our other Allies; they’ve got no time to raise wheat and such; their farmers are fighting their war and ours, and the women are working in munition factories and taking the men’s places at home. And there are our boys—my boy—going over there, depending on us at home to send them food. If we are lazy and selfish and don’t raise it, or if we are greedy and selfish and use it wasteful and extravagant, what’s to become of them?�
“Why, why�—Mr. Jones was bewildered—“I raised all that’s on this table, ’cept a little sugar and such, that if I didn’t buy somebody else would. I always was a good provider; we’re used to a good table, and nobody’s got a right to ask me to live stinting,� he said, with rising anger.
“They’ve got a right to ask me to give my son, my own flesh and blood,� said Mrs. Mallett, with a fire of righteous wrath that paled Mr. Jones’s flicker of temper. “And yet you think they haven’t got a right to ask you to give up your hot biscuits and meat three times a day! S’pose you are used to being a good provider? Ain’t I used to going to bed easy in mind about my boy Fayett—and any day I may hear he’s dead.�
“They oughtn’t to have sent him, your boy,� mumbled Mr. Jones. “They’ve got no business to send our men over there to fight, and maybe——�
“They’ve got all the right to send him to fight for his country. But Fayett didn’t wait for any draft. He went of his free will—I’m glad and proud of it—to fight for liberty. And if he dies, I want it to be the Germans that kill him. I don’t want you, that have known him since he was a curly-headed baby boy, to be the ones to help kill him.�
“Why, Mrs. Mallett!� Mrs. Jones said in a hurt, amazed voice. “We wouldn’t harm a hair of his head; not for the world, we wouldn’t.�