Solomon laid a protesting paw upon her knee.
"You knows that I be tried beyond my powers, that I be mazed and dazed beyond what tongue can tell."
Solomon leaped into her lap, and attempted to lick her face.
"No, no, Solly; my kissing days be over."
Solomon refused to believe this.
"You knows, too, that my Alferd be going to the wars, and he won't come back. 'Twill kill that pore white-faced lil' maid. But 'twon't kill me, I be too tough, Sol. I be getting tougher. And I get no taste out o' life neither. I be so wicked that, times, I could lift my hand to kill they who stay behind, guzzling ale, grinning because they think theirselves so clever! I fair wonders that you can love so wicked an old 'ooman as I be."
Solomon, as a last reassuring protest, would curl up and fall asleep. Mrs. Yellam would sit on, staring into the fire, trying to adjust the workings of the Divine Mind with her own perplexed intelligence. Often kindly sleep would come to the rescue, and she would wake with a start to find the fire burnt out and the kitchen cold. But Solomon lay snug and warm against her.
Many persons, besides Mrs. Yellam, were mazed and dazed during these Spring days. At Neuve Chapelle, our cavalry had their feet in stirrup ready to ride down the enemy, when a thick mist rolled up and balked them of their prey. Jupiter Pluvius seemed to be fighting against us. The appalling earthquake in Italy was joyously affirmed by Germans to be God's judgment upon an ally who had deserted them. Strikes in the industrial parts, Irish troubles going from bad to worse, seemed to indicate the chastening hand of Omnipotence.
But we had accomplished a mighty miracle.
Five hundred thousand men were in France, and not a life lost during the perilous operations connected with transport.