'Oh, she understands,' said Linda; 'her feeling is not against individuals. Your soldiers have eaten and rested here three or four times, for we are almost the only people left. We stay because we have nowhere to go, and we none of us care what happens.'
Mortimer went to the door.
'I must see to my poor horse,' he said presently.
The girl summoned the stolid-faced little boys—sons they were of the sons who were slain. She gave them a lantern, and bade them show the strange guest the stables. Then she ran to the kitchen herself.
Mortimer was twenty minutes drying down his horse, feeding it, making it comfortable, for the fate of his despatches rested on its welfare. Then he went back to the kitchen.
The mother was there. She had left her dead after a few minutes, to busy herself with the task of getting all the wet figures into dry garments. She was mixing drinks, hot, strong drinks that made the girls blink and choke even while it restored them. She had the grandfather wrapped in rugs, sitting closest of all to the fire.
When Mortimer stood in the doorway, dripping helmet, dripping khaki suit, she moved towards him.
'Drink this,' she said, and gave him a deep mug of hot liquid.
He swallowed it gratefully, for the cold seemed in his very bones.
'Here are some clothes,' she said, and picked up a rough farming-suit that she had laid in readiness on a chair—'here is a room.' She stepped across the passage. 'Change at once, and hand me your wet things to dry.'