Richard explained: “David told me Con held out when the rest of them changed their name; he was a Territorial ages before the war, and his men knew him as Rothenburg—good enough for them!” with a defiant scowl in the direction of Mr Gryce. The latter, sending out his plate for more bacon: “I’ve had nothing but fat and gristle!” remarked further to the young lady at the table beside him: “They’re not half strict enough over this alien business. I like a German to be a German; if they want to fight, can’t they stick to their own side?”
“Though I’m not surprised some of them are ashamed to,” he creaked on, pulling his tuft of beard irascibly.
“No more, thanks.” Richard escaped from the room. He very rarely finished a meal nowadays.... Aunt Stella followed him out, and waylaid him in the empty hall:
“Richard, you must take care what you say in the dining-room. You shouldn’t have jumped up like that. Everybody saw.”
“And Con died so that—so that he could have his second helping of bacon,” Richard exploded.
“Yes, but you know in our position we’ve got to be careful. You especially.”
“It’s so unfair. So beastly unfair. If I thought he only said it to get my back up—but he believes it. He oughtn’t to be let believe it. I want to hammer it into him that old Con wasn’t even conscripted—was ready at the very first shove-off. Oh, it’s mean to do him out of the credit. Not that he would have cared, but——”
Stella was surprised. Her nephew’s extreme taciturnity was one of her stock subjects for jest.
“You’ll have to go and condole with the Rothenburgs to-day.”
Richard immediately lapsed into surly schoolboyhood: “Lord! Must I?”