Polly drew her glasses down and gave him a long, straight look full of a deep and abiding love.
“You’re the stitch, Peter my man,” she whispered back as if fearing someone might hear, “always the saving stitch. And take this to bed with you, brother: the frazzling isn’t half so dangerous as dry rot, or moth eating holes in you. Queer, but I was getting to think of myself as laid on the shelf before Brace drifted in, and when I do that I get old-acting and stiff-jointed. But I’ve noticed that it’s the same with folks as it is with the world, when they begin to flatten down, then the good Lord drops something into them to make ’em sorter rise. No need to flatten down until you’re dead. Feeling tired is healthy and proper––not feeling at all is being finished. So now, Peter, you just go along to bed. I always have felt that a man hates to be set up for, but he can overlook a woman doing it; he sets it down to her general foolishness, but Brace would just naturally get edgy if he found us both up.”
Peter came clumsily across the room and stood over the 108 small creature on the sofa. He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he said gruffly:
“See that the fire’s banked, Polly. Looks as if I’d laid on a powerful lot of wood without thinking.” Then he laughed and went on: “You’re durned comical, Polly. What you said about the Lord putting yeast into folks and the world is comical.”
“I didn’t say yeast, Peter Heathcote.”
“Well, yer meant yeast.”
“No, I didn’t mean yeast. I just meant something like Brace was talking about to-day.”
“What was it?” Peter stood round and solid with the firelight ruddily upon him.
“He said that the fighting overseas ain’t properly a war, but a general upheaval of things that have got to come to the top and be skimmed off. We ain’t ever looked at it that way.” Polly resorted to familiar similes when deeply affected.
“I guess all wars is that.” Peter looked serious. He rarely spoke of the trouble that seemed far, far from his quiet, detached life, but lately he had shaken his head over it in a new way. “But God ain’t meaning for us to take sides, Polly. It’s like family troubles. You don’t understand them, and you better keep out. Just think of our good German friends and neighbours. We can’t go back on them just ’cause their kin across the seas have taken to fighting. Our Germans have, so to speak, married in our family, and we must stand by ’em.” Peter was voicing his unrest. Polly saw the trouble in his face.