“Oh, yes, sir,” cried the landlady, with her voice half-drowned by a sudden flap and a sizzling noise which indicated, without the appetising odour which soon began to rise to Rodd’s nostrils, that their landlady had vigorously slapped a thick rasher of pink-and-white ham into the hot frying-pan; “I know what you think, sir, and what you told me only last night about being a loyal subject of King George, and these being our natural enemies, whom we ought to hate.”
Ciss! went the ham, and Rodd felt as if he should like to shout “Hear, hear!”
“But I can’t help remembering what I hear at church about forgiving our enemies; and I am sure you would, sir, if you knew what I do about those poor fellows, torn away from their own people and shut up behind prison bars, and all for doing nothing.”
Just then there was a little spluttering noise as if the pan were chuckling.
“For doing nothing!” shouted Uncle Paul, and a sound from his room suggested that he had set down the washhand jug with a bang. “The scoundrels who invaded our shores?”
Ciss! said the pan.
“That they didn’t, sir!” cried the landlady. “They didn’t even try; and even if they had there were all our brave fellows round the coasts who would soon have stopped them.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Rodd, very softly, for he was speaking into his sweet-scented towel, whose scent was that of fresh air and wild thyme.
“Well, well, that’s right,” shouted Uncle Paul; “but they wanted to.”
Whish-ish, went the pan, and there was a good deal more spluttering, and in his mind’s eye Rodd saw the great rasher turned right over, to begin sizzling again.