When Blackburn reached Briarlay, he found Letty and Caroline walking under the budding trees in the lane, and stopping his car, he got out and strolled slowly back with them to the house. The shimmer and fragrance of spring was in the air, and on the ground crowds of golden crocuses were unfolding.
"Father, will you go to war if Uncle Roane does?" asked Letty, as she slipped her hand into Blackburn's and looked up, with her thoughtful child's eyes, into his face. "Uncle Roane says he is going to whip the Germans for me."
"I'll go, if they'll take me, Letty. Your Uncle Roane is ten years younger than I am." At the moment the war appeared to him, as it had appeared to Mary, as the open door—the way of escape from an intolerable situation; but he put this idea resolutely out of his mind. There was a moral cowardice in using impersonal issues as an excuse for the evasion of personal responsibility.
"But you could fight better than he could, father."
"I am inclined to agree with you. Perhaps the Government will think that way soon."
"Alan is going, too. Mother begged him not to, but he said he just had to go. Mammy Riah says the feeling is in his bones, and he can't help it. When a feeling gets into your bones you have to do what it tells you."
"It looks as if Mammy Riah knew something about it."
"But if you go and Alan goes and Uncle Roane goes, what will become of mother?"
"You will have to take care of her, Letty, you and Miss Meade."
Caroline, who had been walking in silence on the other side of the road, turned her head at the words. She was wearing a blue serge suit and a close-fitting hat of blue straw, and her eyes were as fresh and spring-like as the April sky.