And thus, Abigail had returned from the meeting moved to the very core of her kind heart by the harrowing details the speaker had related of fine, daring, courageous, and magnificent specimens of British and Colonial manhood, left desolate and uncared for, pining for a word of sympathy and understanding from someone in the home-land—a word that never came, alas!
Abigail said it had quite put her off her supper that night, thinking of all those brave men, defending us and our homes right up to their very last breath—and yet, never a woman to get them a clean pair of socks or a hot meal when all was over; not a letter of sympathy, nor a card with a line on it (here cook told her that funeral cards had quite gone out), not so much as a word of encouragement from any relative under the sun, every woman at home selfishly engaged with her own concerns—— Why, it was a disgrace to the country that our heroes should be neglected and put upon by the women of the land in any such way! And please would I mind her sending off a cake as soon as possible? as of course she had adopted a lonely sailor, wouldn’t have it on her conscience not to; and cook was quite willing to make it, there was plenty of dripping, and we still had a fair amount of carraway seeds left, and they wouldn’t come as expensive as currants—cook’s cousins at the Crystal Palace liked carraways quite as well as currants if plenty of spice and peel was put in. The fried potatoes had nearly choked her, when she was telling cook about it all . . . no, not because she was talking with her mouth full; she meant that the very thought of those poor lonely men was like eating sawdust. The speaker at the meeting had said he was sure each one present had only to ask her employer, and permission would be given immediately and gladly for a cake or potted meat or some other little delicacy to be sent once a week, as a sign of sympathy and understanding, to one of these grand yet lonely souls.
Of course I immediately and gladly gave permission for the concrete sympathy to be sent once a week, but stipulated that it was to be a cake; five shillings’ worth of meat, as per my butcher’s charges, goes positively nowhere when “potted.” I reckoned that a good dripping cake would give the desolate one a deal more sympathy for the money.
(At the same time, to keep our rations properly balanced I cut off the small plate of spice buns, our only cake luxury, which had been in the habit of adorning our Sunday afternoon tea-table.)
And oh! the care with which we sewed up that first box of sympathy in a remnant of cretonne, carefully putting it on wrong side out (to preserve its beauty), and hoping that when he undid it he would notice what a charming pattern of purple dahlias and blue roses was on the inside, and how the cretonne was just a nice size to make up into a boot bag if he chanced to be needing a new one.
I pass over the next few weeks while we waited anxiously for the “lonely sailor” to materialise. He was engaged on board H.M.S. “The North Sea,” and sailors, we know, are subject to wind and weather. Abigail said she almost wished now that she had selected a lonely soldier; she could have had one if she had liked; but she had chosen a sailor because she thought he might wear better. The German sailors didn’t seem so pigheadedly bent on fighting as the German soldiers were.
We did our best to keep the time from hanging idly on our hands by devising as much variety as possible for future menus, discussing the respective merits of cinnamon versus cocoanut as a flavouring, and wondering whether after all we shouldn’t be more likely to buck up his desolate spirits (and more particularly his pen) if we sent a sultana cake next week, rather than gingerbread.
I never before knew Abigail so prompt in her attendance upon the postman’s knock as she was during those blank weeks that accompanied the first half-dozen cakes. And then, when she was in a very slough of dark despondency, and constantly wondering who had eaten them, since they had evidently never reached him, a letter arrived, and forthwith Abigail trod upon air—figuratively, I mean, not literally; in reality I never heard her so noisy; she went up and down, up and down the stairs past my study door where I was working, as though she had lost a step and was looking for it! Finally, when I heard her singing “Days and moments quickly flying” as she O-cedar-mopped some neighbouring polished boards, I knew something must have happened, and I opened the door and asked if anything was the matter? Whereupon she produced the letter from the bib of her apron—would have brought it before, only knew I liked everything to be perfectly quiet when I was working—and didn’t I think it was a lovely letter?